One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest: “Your hand is staining my window.”
With the possible exception of Chinatown, it is difficult to find a better performance from Jack Nicholson than when he played R.P. McMurphy in Milos Forman’s adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Nicholson’s own brand of manic, irresistible charisma leaks so effortlessly into the clinical surroundings of the mental institution – and the lives of the men within it – that he gives the impression that he isn’t really acting a part at all, but in true McMurphy style just wandered onto the set from the street one day, had a bit of a laugh, and disappeared again. The only obstacle to McMurphy’s lively revolution of this subdued little world is Louise Fletcher’s diabolical Nurse Ratched – the sort of healthcare professional that suddenly makes a trip to your own hospital feel like a pleasant family reunion.
Following Fletcher’s wonderful (and Oscar-winning) performance, Nurse Ratched has become a household name. Dictatorial yet somehow horrendously reasonable, most of her power over the vulnerable people in her care comes from the fact that her cruelty is almost completely invisible. But McMurphy sees it. And it is only he who is capable of breaking through it, so that others might see it too.
In the film’s early stages, McMurphy wanders into the nurses’ station in search of the volume control for the music playing intrusively through the ward. Ratched’s reaction when she finds him there a few moments later is one of characteristic indifference, giving away hardly an iota of shock, anger, or even irritation. She is, we might think, almost kind. She remains completely composed as she removes McMurphy from the booth and – admirably – maintains the coolness even as the insistent McMurphy comes to the dispensing window to continue arguing. At all times her manner is nothing but serene and neutral. And then she notices McMurphy’s arm against the glass screen. Leaning towards him only slightly, and with almost no change in her voice, she mildly states: “your hand is staining my window.”
Although it doesn’t seem immediately confrontational, this short phrase is really as aggressive as if she had stabbed him with a syringe; in that short phrase we see her contempt, her resentment, her possessive need for control, her desperation for authority– everything that makes up the twisted motivations beneath her innocent exterior.
Given that Nurse Ratched’s malevolence depends so specifically on her maintaining her unbreakable façade, the fact that she betrays herself so clearly here is almost a sort of anti-understatement; more happens, rather than less. But it is still a wonderful example of how the very deepest and most significant aspects of a character can be revealed in the smallest of ways.
