One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

A film that helped to cement Jack Nicholson's reputation as an actor willing to take roles on the bleeding edge, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was also notable for giving director Milos Forman a solid position in American cinema…and for giving composer Jack Nitzsche a place to show what he could do. As it is, the edgy nature of the film extends into the score, giving it a profoundly disturbing feel at times – even when it appears to be relatively normal. The music has a tendency to always be a little off-kilter, and from time to time it tilts completely over into a strange little world of its own (something very familiar to fans of Van Dyke Parks, with whom Nitzsche worked quite a bit). It's a pity that this score has faded from sight over the time since its 1991 remastering; the music has certainly continued to stand up well over time.

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy – manic free spirit Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is sent to the state mental hospital for evaluation, when he was playing crazy to avoid prison work detail.

Jack Nitzsche was one of the true wildmen of American popular music. His reputation was made as arranger on Phil Spector's classic recordings and a pillar of his Wrecking Crew, but his reach is so much wider and deeper than that that's it's a wonder that Hearing Is Believing isn't a multi-disc box set instead of a 26-track, single-CD compilation.