Milos Forman:"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975)

Milos Forman had proven his talent for astute social comedy in such earlier Czech films as Loves of a Blonde (1965) and The Firemen's Ball (1967), and his adept treatment of Cuckoo's Nest's metaphorically loaded conflict fulfilled the promise of an immigrant observer of American culture indicated in his first U.S. feature, Taking Off (1971). Shot on location at the Oregon State Hospital, and visually imprisoning the characters in tightly framed compositions, Haskell Wexler's and Bill Butler's cinematography underlines the psychological as well as physical confinement dogging the patients. The restrained, soft-spoken control of Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched contrasts with the thoughtful vigor of Jack Nicholson's McMurphy, further emphasizing both the need to revolt and the difficulty in doing so posed by such consistent, quiet, internalized power. For a culture battered by the chaotic rebellions of the late 1960s/early 1970s, and the serial failures of institutional authority culminating in Watergate and the fall of Saigon, Cuckoo's Nest's resigned yet hopeful portrayal of spirited non-conformity touched a nerve, turning it into one of the most popular films of 1975. The independently produced film became only the second film in history to sweep all five top Academy Awards, winning Best Picture for producers Saul Zaentz and 31-year-old Michael Douglas, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay for Lawrence Hauben's and Bo Goldman's adaptation of the Kesey novel. Shrewdly combining roustabout fervor and humor with an acknowledgement of society's different limits, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest effectively communicated the disillusionment of the waning counter-culture even as it optimistically asserted that one rebel could make a difference.

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CULT MOVIE: BLUE VELVET (1986)

Repellent, fascinating, surreal-- this is the kind of film for which critics ransack their entire vocabulary of adjectives. Never comfortable viewing, with the tone set from the opening shot of impossibly blue skies and white fences contrasted with wet, dark beetles. MacLachlan plays Jeffrey Beaumont, a character with certain similarities to the director (echoes which the actor played up by dressing and buttoning his shirt like Lynch) who finds a human ear and is embroiled in a horrific small-town mystery. Underneath all of Lynch's trickery, this is a very personal film. Many scenes (including the controversial scene where Hopper rapes and degrades Rossellini) have some link to the director's childhood memories. That may be why, for all the violence, this story always has a weird logic which propels it relentlessly forward.
Director: David Lynch Cast: Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, Dennis Hopper

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CULT MOVIE:TAXI DRIVER(1976)

Scorsese edited this while on a diet of Dom Perignon and Quaaludes, and at one point threatened to shoot the studio boss who wanted to change the ending. Scorsese won the argument. His Vietnam vet Travis Bickle is one of film's great loners. Scriptwriter Paul Schrader always claimed he was inspired to write this by watching John Wayne's The Searchers, another film where the hero becomes obsessed with rescuing women. He was also inspired by diaries of the man who shot George Wallace: a fact which seemed doubly pertinent when John Hinckley would try to assasinate Ronald Reagan in part to impress Jodie Foster. The astonishing thing about the film is, even though we can all do Travis Bickle impersonations, how fresh it all seems. Bickle's aloneness is convicingly drawn. Not to be confused with Confessions Of A Taxi Driver, released the same year.
Director:Martin Scorsese Cast:Robert De Niro,Jodie Foster

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