Best Actress: Louise Fletcher
Surely Nurse Ratched is the most villainous character ever played by a Best Actress winner?
Up until 1975, at least.
It's been so long since I've seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I'd forgotten how brief Louise Fletcher's screentime is. Once you've seen this movie, her presence looms large over it all. But revisiting it after at least a decade, it was like seeing it for the first time.
Louise Fletcher plays Nurse Ratched as simply cold and unchallenged, her authority so absolute that she doesn't need to show us that she can lose her temper through brash moments or histrionics. The way she sets her jaw and stares, daring anyone to question her, shows the absolute control she exercises over the men on her ward. There's a scene when Randall calls her Mildred instead of Nurse or Miss and the way her eyes flash is chilling.
Power almost always corrupts a person (I say 'almost' and I'm struggling to think of one person that wasn't even a little bit corrupted by the power they held...) and when you've wielded it unchecked for the length of time Nurse Ratched has, when someone comes in to challenge you and proves a more popular leader, it's not always about acting out in the loudest way, it's about being the most effective. You think change is going to happen, but at the last second, she puts her cards on the table and you realize that the men never stood a chance against her.
[None of this to say that Randall is a hero, he's been arrested this time for the statutory rape of a 15-year-old and tries to justify it because she didn't look her age.]
For such a relatively short amount of screentime, which I think totals around 22 minutes and change, you certainly see the effect Nurse Ratched has on the rest of the characters. It's a very deserving performance.
Louise was nominated against Isabelle Adjani (The Story of Adele H.), Ann-Margret (Tommy), Glenda Jackson (Hedda), and Carol Kane (Hester Street). I haven't seen any of the other nominated performances, though they're all great actresses (maybe one with a few questionable wins, but that's neither here nor there), but I can't imagine not rewarding Louise for this performance.
There was also a touching moment during her Oscar speech, when she began to sign what she was saying so that her parents, both deaf, could understand through the television screen what she was saying.
DID I LIKE ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST? Yes!
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Did you like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? What are your thoughts on Louise Fletcher's Oscar win?
Keep up with all my Rewatching the Best Actresses posts here!
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