Foreign Language Film 2: La Dolce Vita (Italy, 1960)

As we have continued along this project, we’ve begun to notice that there aren’t any international films taking home the ‘Best Picture’ trophy. While we’re reviewing the main winners then, we’ve decided to recognise some of the most famous non-English speaking pieces every three weeks, continuing with Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita

Plot Intro

A journalist in Rome, Marcello (Marcello Mastroianni), embarks on a series of adventures whilst both trying to get some scandalous tabloid stories and trying to live “la dolce vita”, a life of comfort, decadence and carefreeness.

Doug says...

The word ‘masterpiece’ is thrown around a lot these days. I think I’ve even heard McDonalds use it to describe one of their new chicken nugget snacks. Hyperbole is everywhere and so we must strive to not overuse it. In cinema ‘masterpieces’ aren’t necessarily easy-going films, and they might not be films one chooses to watch repeatedly. But what they do do, to some respect, is break some ground, tell a story in a fresh way, and on some level access deeper meaning, or provide something that will inevitably stick in your brain. 

We watched Notting Hill last night, and while that was infinitely more enjoyable than La Dolce Vita, it is the latter film - 1960’s Italian piece on journalism, excess and love - that rightfully carries the title of ‘masterpiece’. It is an extraordinary film, unlike any that I have seen before, and (considering my previous rants about film length) carries its nearly three-hour length with ease. 

I think what this film is mainly about - although I could be wrong considering its murky plotting - is the new world of the ‘60s entering and changing the Italian landscape. It’s also about journalism - and how disturbing the papparazzi can be (at one point a new widow is surrounded by them, flashing cameras in her face while she is told the news that her husband is dead). We see countless scenes of revellers, bored wealthy people desperate to enjoy their lives with cabaret shows, attempted orgies and a seizing of anything that’s new - even if what’s new is just a giant fish washed up on the beach. 

There’s a tonne of symbolism to back me up here - the film opens with a statue of Jesus being flown over Rome by helicopter, swiftly followed by a bunch of reporters in their own helicopter - who hang out the doors and try to ask women out as they fly past. Religion is literally being shifted away by sex - and the pursuit of it. 

It’s also an incredibly sexual piece (hello 1960s Italy…), especially with the second ‘episode’, where Anita Ekberg as a rich film star dances in the streets. It’s an eroticism that American Hollywood shies away from, and it’s a credit to the film that we see no nudity, and yet the seedy, sexual nature of Marcello and Rome’s wider social circle still feels vibrantly put across and almost shocking in nature. 

But the real triumph of this film is how well it’s shot. Clearly Fellini knows what he’s doing, because every moment is captured beautifully on screen - no more than the penultimate scene when Marcello drunkenly rips feathers from a cushion and scatters them on top of party-goers. The light catches the feathers as they fall and covers the drunken, mewling partygoers with an essence of glamour that is ultimately as fragile as feathers themselves. 

It’s not a film where I felt I got many of the points - but unlike other pieces where the feeling of missing pertinent points is irritating, here it felt a simple evocation of how layered a piece it is. While it’s one for the film student, it also holds enough accessible detail that a casual viewer will still become entranced by the strange, dream-like events. At one point a rich American reveller pauses drunkenly in a door frame and mutters ‘for every biological test says octopi are oversexed.’ Bizarre but somehow enthralling - much like La Dolce Vita itself. 

Highlight 

The moment when Anita Ekberg dances in the streets before plunging into the Trevi Fountain is called iconic. For once, it’s a title well-deserved. She brings fire, energy and sensuality to just a fragment of the film, and yet is among its most memorable elements. 

Lowlight

Not a lowlight as such, but I did have to keep checking up on Wikipedia to find out what was really happening. However I can’t help but feel the murky uncertainty was something Fellini was deliberately trying to create. 

Mark 

10/10 

Paul says...

This film must have been a bit of an atom bomb in 1960 - and it was. The Best Picture winners of the '60s is fraught with ostensibly chaste musicals, with realism and modern society only coming in during the latter half of the decade. La Dolce Vita, this epic, multi-layered, daring film from the lethargic heat of Italy, provided a sensual, sexually-charged, immoral and sometimes voyeuristic alternative to, for example, The Sound of Music.

It’s essentially a film about burnt-out youths, who believed that post-war, post-Fascism Italy was to become a new land of hope and opportunity, with mass consumerism, travel, glamour, art and moral freedom finally making its way into this end of the Mediterranean. These youths, however, are now pushing 30 and 40, and have found that such a hedonistic lifestyle has led to conflict, exhaustion and a suicidal sense of nihilism. 

It is told through seven “episodes”, or so the critics claim. The critics have sometimes linked these episodes together to form seven consecutive nights within the film’s plot, and have also linked the seven episodes to other symbolic “sevens”, such as the seven sins and the seven sacraments. Whether this is the case or not would require a lot more critical research and analysis than a 500-word blog post can supply. However, it does ensure that various aspects of late-50s/early-60s Italian society are illustrated and explored in great depth. Religion, sex, celebrity, family, intellectualism, age vs youth, all the themes an English Literature student lives for are analysed here through these various sequences. 

As Doug points out, and I agree with this, it is beautifully shot with some captivating sequences. Anita Ekberg, who steals the movie even though she is only in the second episode, revels in music, dance and frolicking in a fountain in a very expensive-looking gown. I can see why the producers of Friends chose such an image for their opening titles. A circus-esque club/party that Marcello attends with his father; a stampede of panicking, superstitious Catholics; a group of friends listening to recorded sounds of nature rather than entering nature itself; all of these contribute to the sense that life in this supposedly “new” Italy is artificial, false and full of people having various breakdowns whilst being photographed by bouncing, over-excited paparazzi. As a journalist, Marcello represents the rest of society in that he has no desire to help those in need, he simply wants to watch and comment on them whilst he lives the “sweet life”, La Dolce Vita. Lana Del Ray probably loves this film.

It’s a fascinating movie, yes. But I’m not as enamoured of it as Doug for the fundamental reason that it’s probably an hour too long. By the time the sixth episode begins and we are in a very strange party in a castle where people chase each other sexually through various labyrinths, I felt like the point of the film had already been made. By the time the seventh episode comes around, the famous “orgy” scene, in which Marcello pretty much forces his friends to let go of all morals and go full on Bacchanal, I was done. This scene is so lengthy and overdone and I knew that, like all of the previous sequences, there would be no real conclusion, because the movie wants us to know that these characters’ situations are perpetual. It could have ended either an hour ago, or the pace could have been much quicker to whip through these set pieces.

Call me a philistine if you wish, but there’s only so much anti-hedonistic, inconclusive moaning that I can take. It’s a bit like listening to someone make a political point, but then go on to make the same point but in different ways over and over and over again. 

Highlight

Anita Ekberg’s sequence is worth watching as a stand-alone film. She’s fab.

Lowlight

The final “orgy” sequence that felt repetitive and drawn-out. 

Mark

5/10

50. Annie Hall (1977)

Plot Intro

Alvy Singer (Woody Allen) is a stand-up comedian in New York City. Annie Hall (Diane Keaton) is an aspiring singer and photographer in New York City. The two of them start dating.

Paul says...

I’ve never seen a Woody Allen film until now. Honestly, I’ve always intended to! Blue Jasmine and Midnight in Paris have sat there tantalisingly either on the DVD shelves or for free on Amazon Prime but alas, when choosing something to watch my hand has always gravitated automatically to the Ugly Betty DVDs. But now, as a result of this project, I have been forced to face the Allen, and I suppose Annie Hall, being often hailed as his magnum opus, is a good place to start.

Annie Hall has all the tropes and trademarks that Woody Allen is often lambasted for. Lengthy camera shots, hefty amounts of naturalistic dialogue, plot-lite and a snarky, pessimistic sense of humour. And all in all, Annie Hall is not a bad use of 90 minutes. It is, in fact, a superb bit of character work, and we spend the entirety of the film getting to know the two main characters through snappy flashbacks, meta-theatrical set pieces, anecdotes and simply watching them sitting around talking. The film captures the experience of getting to know a new person - you don’t really get them until you discover more about their past, their psyche and how you behave around them yourself.

It’s easy to identify with Alvy. He’s short, ugly and socially awkward, and knows it too. Like almost all stand-up comedians, his self-loathing leads to a debilitating series of self-deprecating jokes, and using intellectualism as his safety net. He’d rather see a 4-hour documentary about Nazis than go to a fashionable party where he could feel out of place. Annie, meanwhile, is the optimist, life-is-for-living kind of gal. She is driven by beautiful things, friendly people and general motivation to experience the world. The two are so mis-matched that the relationship is doomed from the start, but they find solace in one another by almost trying to be the other one. The cleverest scene for me was during one of their first encounters in which they discuss photography. Annie discusses her love of photography’s spontaneity and the beauty of every day things, but Alvy insists on social perspective and rules of framing a picture. Meanwhile, a series of subtitles reveal both characters’ inner thoughts, in which Annie wishes she was as analytical as he, while Alvy worries that she will see him as a bit of a dork. 

These innovative pieces of abstract meta-theatre mean that the film achieves a level of character analysis that is very, very deep. Second or third viewings along with critical analyses of Freudian and Jewish themes would probably help me understand the film in the same way that academics would. For now, I gained great enjoyment out of Alvy and Annie’s thoughts being illustrated on screen, as well as Alvy’s complaints to the audience directly and his questioning of random passers by about relationships, all of whom answer frankly and without batting an eyelid. The film is a very intense dissection of dating, making psychological and social comments that the Bridget Jones movies only dream of achieving. 

But whilst I enjoyed the innovation of the film-making and the sparky dialogue, I had no emotional connection to the romance between them. I realise that I’m probably not supposed to. This is not a romantic comedy like It Happened One Night, Marty, The Apartment or even last week’s Rocky where you are literally screaming for the man and woman to get together. But I would have liked to want Alvy and Annie to get together, and such intense psychoanalysis makes even 90 minutes a little arduous at times.

Annie Hall is proof that sometimes smaller, lower-budget movies can achieve great things. But one of its fellow Best Picture nominees was the far more marketable and far grander Star Wars, and whilst I would have loved to be a typical film critic who places Annie Hall on a pedestal, I still prefer Star Wars.

Highlight

The abstract touches were really fun. The subtitles scene explained above, plus a scene in which Alvy tries to have sex with Annie but she is so not in the mood that a ghost version of herself gets up from the bed and sits watching sardonically, are examples of some great ideas coming from Allen.

Lowlight

Not a particular “moment” as such, but some emotional involvement would have been nice. I guess I’m always going to prefer the Titanic-style romance over this.

Mark

6/10

Doug says...

When I was studying at RADA, I was having a full-on discussion with my coursemates in the pub after rehearsals. Our topic of discussion was Woody Allen and the accusations against him by his own children of abuse. ‘But,’ said one of my friends, ‘if he asked you to be in his film, you wouldn’t say no.’ 

Allen’s films are often superb. I’ve seen a handful of them and while I find these older ones - Hannah and Her Sisters, Manhattan etc to be so much more dated, that’s actually very indicative of Allen’s style of churning out a film a year at least. He scripts them, shoots them and then moves on. It’s a ferocious career that results in a Wikipedia page that’s crammed with films of every genre. His later films Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine are extraordinary, brimming with imagery, desire and a sense of restlessness that leads characters into bizarre, unhappy situations. The calibre of actors who still choose to work with him (Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Michael Sheen) are testament to the strength of work he produces. 

And Annie Hall is very much Allen canon. It has familiar flashes of magic realism and cinematic trickery (at one point Annie and Alvy walk through rooms from her past where they watch her younger self being wooed by a pretentious actor (‘put your foot upon my heart’, the lothario actor says, kneeling on the floor in front of her). And it also has the familiar separateness. It’s very hard in any Allen film to feel engaged with the characters, I think he deliberately separates us from them, so we watch but don’t feel. It’s often due to his own performance (Allen often takes the lead role in his own work) which is always exactly the same: small, neurotic, insecure and Jewish. 

I actively dislike him as an actor. He never goes beneath the surface to find the spark that makes people likeable, and so he irritates me so much that I spend every scene wishing he wasn’t in it. In the more recent Midnight in Paris, the ‘Allen’ role was taken by Owen Wilson who imbued it with so much more heart that it lifted the film to actually become affecting as well as cerebral. I’m also at odds with another element - they often lack good comic timing so what would be very funny moments miss the beat by a second and actually fall flat. I don’t tend to laugh, when a split second earlier would have had me cackling. 

I do however like the surrealism. As Paul points out, several scenes feature metatheatre in its best form, characters speaking direct-to-camera, or Allen turns and just speaks to passers-by on the street. It’s fun and breaks up the sometimes-interminable long scenes of naturalistic dialogue. My friend once described Allen films as ‘Sunday afternoon movie’, and she’s right. There’s never any urgency to them, they’re long slow pieces perfect for after a large roast when you’re half-comatose on the sofa. They’re lethargic, but often packed with excellent performances (also we saw a very young Carol Kane in this, which was odd after seeing her pop up in Ugly Betty recently as well as the brilliant Lilian in The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt).

So now for the elephant in the room. I found it very hard to get away from the fact that this is a film by a celebrated film-maker who has serious allegations of abuse against his children, and who married his then-wife’s adopted daughter. 

As part of this project, we have to sometimes come to films that have problematic themes or performers. Kevin Spacey crops up soon in American Beauty and I’m not yet sure about how I feel about watching and critiquing that. I feel the same here. The question of how we separate the art from the artist is an ongoing one (there’s a whole swathe of literary criticism about ‘The Death of the Author’: analysing the work on its own merits without knowledge of the creator), but Allen makes it hard to do this, by being onscreen most of the time, playing the main character who has (I imagine) his own actual traits of insecurity and unlikeability. The character also makes a joke about child-molesting at one point, the irony of which is crushing. Essentially we have made an agreement to watch all the films in this project, but I felt uncomfortable for a large portion of this film. Do we write these films out of history? Do we carry on blindly? Do we wait until Allen is dead and buried and try to smooth over his own history? Does the art outlive the artist? I have no idea. 

Highlight

 I really did enjoy the surrealism of the film overall. It broke up lengthy serious scenes well. 

Lowlight

Long scenes of naturalistic dialogue tend to bore me. 

Mark

I considered abstaining from marking this as I can't help but feel that by giving it a value, I'm almost letting it - and therefore its writer, director and star - off scot free. However as this fits within the wider project, I want to chart it. So I'm reluctantly giving it 7/10. The art wins in this instance. 

49. Rocky (1976)

Plot Intro

An aspiring boxer in Philadelphia, Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone), finds his boxing career stagnating and his life hitting a dead end. However, his opportunity for achievement comes when a boxing champion, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) is looking for an opponent for an upcoming publicity match- and he wants Rocky. Helped by his ageing coach (Burgess Meredith) and his socially awkward girlfriend, Adrian (Talia Shire), Rocky embarks on an intense training regime to revamp his life and survive the ultimate boxing match…

Doug says...

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about toxic masculinity and how it is often exacerbated by the media - in particular the portrayal of so-called “real men” in films - namely men who don’t lose, don’t display emotion and certainly don’t talk about how they feel. 

It was with great wariness then that I came to watch Rocky which is a film about a would-be champion boxer. The moment the film began with the oh-too-familiar dark grainy camerawork that the ‘70s seems to insist upon - I knew I was right. Two more hours of try-hard masculinity to sit through. Oh god. 

Except that I was completely and utterly wrong. Hurrah! This is a brilliant film, with characters in a heavily male-dominated world still feeling able to talk about their feelings, some great acting across the board and such a superb script that when I found out it was written by Sylvester Stallone himself in three days, I was shocked. 

Ultimately I think this is the film that the 1970s has been trying to make this whole time - and not massively succeeding at until now. It’s darkly realistic, with grimy flats and unattractively sweaty men in the gym. It’s got real portrayals of drunken rows in the household and explicit references to sex. But what Stallone finally brings to this gritty era is comedy. We are allowed to finally laugh - and there’s some lovely comic moments, not least of all Rocky’s opponent’s entrance into the ring at the finale - dressed as ‘Uncle Sam’ and trying to pose as the ‘I Want You’ poster. Not to mention the scene where Rocky stone-facedly cracks five eggs into a glass and then downs it. The whole framing of the scene is so simple and straight-forward that it’s actually hilarious. 

The story itself is pretty simple and there’s no real shocks, but to me the quality of the writing means this doesn’t matter one jot. It’s a script that smacks of reality, with actors being given great moments to prove their salt. Talia Shire shines as Adrian, a quiet shopkeeper who Rocky takes to. She blossoms through his affections for her and in one fantastic scene finally turns on her awful brother who’s been taunting her and attacking her for years. It’s a great scene that actually starts with his drunken aggression and ends with him in shock at how much stronger she is. 

This said, the film belongs to Stallone. I’ve never seen him act before and was surprised by how good he actually is. He conveys a lot without moving much of his face, and he conveys Rocky's blunt simplicity (which other characters mistake for stupidity) with so much ease that you find yourself rooting for him immediately. Not to mention his mumbling delivery is more truthful to the character than Marlon Brando ever managed in The Godfather. And as I say at the beginning, it’s so refreshing to see a masculine character talk openly about how he feels - and when someone’s words has hurt him. Ultimately it means we warm to him even more. 

Against all the odds (it is a film about boxing after all…), I loved it. It’s triumphant, the boxing scenes are well done and they don’t go on too long(!) - and the whole film is expertly shot. In particular a scene where Burgess Meredith, as Rocky’s trainer, stands outside Rocky’s flat listening to him rant and rage inside, is so beautifully filmed that this tiny moment became overwhelmingly powerful. A gorgeous piece, and unexpectedly affecting.

Highlight 

For the first time in this project, it has to be the overall script. There are so many scenes that are extraordinarily well written - one being when Rocky walks his friend’s errant sister home and lectures her on how she should be seen. It’s a truthful, sharp scene and ends perfectly with her dismissive reaction. Superb, superb, superb.

Lowlight

It’s a small scene but I found the moment where Rocky first kisses Adrian to be a bit disturbing owing to his preventing her from leaving the flat by blocking the door. Ultimately he’s sensed that she does like him and is just scared about making the first move, but in today’s era, it rings a warning bell. A product of its time - and Rocky is ultimately so good-hearted that it’s difficult to believe it was threatening. But still. 

Mark 

10/10 (but if they made it now, that one scene would be different…)

Paul says...

Boxing. It’s right there in my list of things I just don’t get, along with Christmas markets, over-priced shops that call themselves “boutiques”, and Love Island. Quite frankly, if I wanted to see men punching each other tactically, I’d rather install a camera into the Oval Office. After watching Rocky, I must admit that remain clueless as to the rules and strategies involved in boxing, but I have now gained a vast appreciation for the excitement and hysteria that the sport can mitigate. 

So overall, I very much agree with Doug - Rocky is great. All the more so due to its refreshingly humorous tone, messages of hope and what true achievement really is, and its simple and sweet storyline. But despite the fact that it was the highest grossing movie of 1976, it beat intense political and psychological pieces such as Network, All the President’s Men, and Taxi Driver, and led to a lengthy string of not-so-successful-but-they-made-them-anyway sequels, Rocky often finds itself lambasted as a less-deserving Best Picture winner. I think this is because it has no political or philosophical pretensions. It is proof that sometimes a simple film about simple people is all you need to create a hit. But movie snobs may feel differently. 

Rocky is essentially an underdog story. Neither was it original then, nor is it now, but it’s a timeless tale that everyone can relate to. We’ve seen similar themes in previous decades in films such as You Can’t Take It With You, How Green Was My Valley, On the Waterfront and Marty. Every decade of movies takes the tale of a downtrodden loser achieving greatness and puts their own spin on it. The ‘80s would include more colours and a soundtrack by Starship or Kenny Loggins; the ‘90s would make it about a curtain-haired teenager who likes action figures; and in this diversity-aware age the protagonist would be a woman, or a person of colour, or gay, or a sloth, or all of the above. My point is that, sometimes you don’t need innovation to have people cheering wildly, sometimes you just need heart and humour. Movie writers, take note!

My favourite part of Rocky was the central romance. Rocky is a gentle giant with a penchant for making self-deprecating jokes and you can’t help but adore him. Meanwhile Adrian is so painfully shy she can barely speak and is psychologically abused by her insecure brother. Sylvester Stallone and Talia Shire give spectacular performances, and the whole thing is reminiscent of the equally tender romance between Ernest Borgnine and Betsy Blair in another high-scoring Oscar winner, Marty.

Also, the final fight was tremendously exciting. We spent most of it trying to work out the basic rules of boxing and failed miserably, but this doesn’t detract from us being transfixed to the screen. And the film ends immediately afterwards in a state of histrionic jubilation and Rocky famously yelling out “ADRIAAAAAAAN!” Its suddenness takes you aback, until you realise that the film really doesn’t need to say anything else. It’s a stunning final 15 minutes.

So yes, I haven’t gained a desire to become a boxing fanatic, but I will certainly be singing Rocky’s praises and shouting down those snobs who think all Oscar winners should be as long as Hamlet and just as portentous. Sometimes, when it comes to content, less is more.

Highlight

Besides Talia Shire turning minimal dialogue into a multi-layered performance, the famously motivational montage sequence and the final fight itself, I think my favourite bit is when Rocky patiently bashes 5 eggs into a glass and drinks the contents in one gulp. It’s gross and hilarious.

Lowlight

There were some periods in the film where my attention started to drift. It’s the typically quiet, darkly-lit, dreary ‘70s tone that can become arduous. But this is very minor because the film would drag me right back in again.

Mark

10/10

48. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Plot Intro

In a State Mental Institution, Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) rules her ward with a strict, totalitarian regime, and unquestioned rules. One day, in walks Randle McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), an anarchic, party-loving demi-criminal who has faked insanity in order to spend a prison sentence here, assuming it to be easier. However, Randle and Ratched come to blows from the start, and as Randle starts to lead an uprising against Ratched’s regime, things escalate badly…

Paul says...

Back in 1934, It Happened One Night achieved one of the biggest wins at the Oscars by garnering the 5 most coveted awards- Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress and Screenplay. No film managed to equalise this feat - until One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest came along 40 years later (the third and, so far, final film to achieve this will be reviewed when we reach the 1990s). It is easy to see why Cuckoo’s Nest did so well. In an age when grit, misery, and a general hatred of society got people into the cinema, Cuckoo’s Nest blends this dark edge with much more heart and humour than its contemporaries (namely The Godfather films), and some of its success lies in the fact that audiences were, for once, laughing and cheering.

The original novel by Ken Kesey, who spent some time working in a mental health institution and put much of his experiences into the book, was published in the '60s. The book tackled the treatment of patients suffering from mental health problems head on and slotted perfectly into place at a time when traditional forms of mental health treatment such as shock therapy, general imprisonment and the assumption that anyone who doesn’t comply with society’s rules is mentally deranged, were going out the window in place of more empathetic therapies. Cuckoo’s Nest exposed and questioned the cruelty of the mental health system when civil rights and freedom of expression were the order of the day. Shockingly, Kesey hated the film, particularly citing the fact that it isn’t told from the point of view of the mostly-silent Chief Bromden. Apparently, he refused to watch the film, until he accidentally put it on whilst flicking through TV channels many years later, and it took him several minutes before realising what he was watching.

This is a major shame - Cuckoo’s Nest is a phenomenal piece of work, and one of the highest points of '70s cinema. Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher give two of the best performances of their careers. You can’t take your eyes off Randle and despite his neanderthal attitudes to women, you enjoy his unpredictability and the ironic fact that he’s probably much crazier than the other patients in the hospital. I love Fletcher even more. She’s a villain so cold, unfeeling and menacing that I get a huge kick out of hating her. “Hate” is probably an understatement - the audience is literally clamouring for her head on a spike and her body to be tarred and feathered by the end of this film. She’s magnificently awful, and I especially enjoyed the fact that her double-Swiss roll hairdo looks like devil horns. An appropriate touch.

Cuckoo’s Nest is a simple tale. But what it lacks in plot it makes up for in characters. While Ratched represents the old therapeutic system, valuing propriety, self-control and social conformity (or else), Randle is the new philosophy that gave birth in the 60s, favouring self-expression, humanism and submitting to basic human needs for consumption, sex and revelry. Through these characters, the battle between the old generation and the new is manifested with stirring results. The supporting cast of inmates are also strong. Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd and Vincent Schiavelli all pretty much started their careers here. Many of the cast stayed in character between takes (even some of the extras were real mental health patients) and it is evident that they’re having a great time. The party scene and their fishing trip are both infectiously entertaining segments.

I can’t really fault One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It’s a funny, powerful drama and whilst it maintains some of the despondency of the '70s, it has a sweet-nature and affection for its good guys that feels refreshing at this stage in our project.

Highlight

Pretty much the final 20 minutes. I won’t give it away, but Randle and Ratched clash in such a heartbreaking and melodramatic fashion that you will screaming, cheering and sobbing at the same time. It’s super-involving stuff.

Lowlight

There’s a couple of dialogue that go on a bit, but generally this film is perfectly made. Actually, scratch that. There are no lowlights. I’m being pedantic.

Mark

10/10

Doug says...

A couple of days ago, I turned to Paul and asked him how many of these films so far we’ve seen that he would actively choose to watch again at some point. His answer was ‘not many’, and I’ve been inclined to agree. While there’s some gorgeous stand out pieces (It Happened One Night, How Green Was My Valley, Bridge Over the River Kwai) a lot of these films have felt studiously Important and actually failed to be fully entertaining. For the last few weeks I’ve been dreading watching these films because I have continually failed to be entertained. In fact I’ve spent most of the ‘70s being quite bored and wishing it was over. 

So it is with great relief that I actually enjoyed watching this! It’s a cracking film, filled with tension and uncertainty and a terrific unhinged central performance from Jack Nicholson. The film itself doesn’t have much in the way of plot, but it doesn’t seem to matter as we see the inhabitants of the mental hospital bicker their way through their days, establishing some kind of order out of the stringent chaos. 

It boasts some lovely performances too, especially with Brad Dourif as the vulnerable, moon-calf Billy who falls in love at the drop of a hat. I found the scene where he has sex with one of Randle’s squeezes incredibly affecting, the image of them nestled together when discovered is so quietly tender that it does more that a lot of the rest of the film to highlight that these are people who still love and want physical contact, regardless of their mental condition. 

I also loved Will Sampson as Chief, the man who slowly becomes the actual hero of the film. His last scene with Randle (no spoilers) is incredibly moving, and his ultimate decision becomes all the more powerful - and understandable. 

I completely disagree with Paul on one front though. Nurse Ratched is far from villainous. And actually this annoyed me a bit because in the novel she is so utterly horrendous that I felt for whatever reason they decided to go another way. While Louise Fletcher turns in a magnificent performance, a stony-faced nurse constantly faced with rebellion, I actually found most of her actions understandable. Patients beg her not to tell people of their actions, but what sort of professional would lie and cover up behaviour? She’d be ultimately condemnable for it. And actually I found most of her choices to be the right ones in terms of professional pathways. If there is an enemy in this film, it’s actually the health service itself, who readily use Electric Shock Therapy and lobotomies instead of addressing the issues themselves. But that’s the wider industry, not Ratched. And while I appreciate her having a more layered character, I did miss the utter villain from the novel. 

It was great to watch a compelling film again, and while I didn’t particularly feel sorry for the characters when various horrid things happened, I was always interested in the events. The terrific set pieces of the film - the ship voyage and the party - are fantastic and always with an underlying sense of tension. These are severely mentally unwell people and although the scenes are filled with fun and excitement, we’re always aware that they are one step away from collapsing and plunging into anarchy. It’s this sense of danger that underlies the film, and means we never quite relax. A very good piece of work. 

Highlight

Louise Fletcher, returning to the ward after the destruction of the party has been wreaked. She quivers with rage (again - understandably) and it’s a masterclass in subtlety. 

Lowlight

I wanted more of a villain in Nurse Ratched. It’s just that she’s so awful in the book, and I felt her strongly diluted here. 

Mark

8/10