One Flew over The Cuckoo's Nest: Film vs. Novel

The movie and the novel of One flew over the cuckoo's nest do generally share the same story line, however, the movie has to fit a huge amount of events into 133 minutes. Because the film contains only a limited amount of time, it narrows the scope of events that occur within the originally written novel. But although this is true, there may have been a couple relevant scenes in the novel that could have made the film a bit more effective, not affecting the time duration of the film. It is true that perchance the producer of the film also wanted to incorporate their own style to the film, not wanting to completely simulate the feel of the novel.

One of the visual elements that changes from the novel to the film is that McMurphy is portrayed different, as Jack Nicholson playing his character. Thus, in the film McMurphy doesn't have red hair or tattoos, and isn't as muscularly defined as the McMurphy in the novel: “Nobody’s sure if this barrel-chested man with the scar and the wild grin is play-acting or if he’s crazy enough to be just like he talks…” (18). A similarity between them though, would be that Jack Nicholson does a great job emulating McMurphy from the novel's personality, being the gambling jokester and taking on the persona of a leader. Therefore McMurphy's overall character is preserved, just not the proper visualization of him.

Also a drastic difference between the novel and the film is the portrayal of chief Bromden. In the novel the reader has a profound insight into the inner workings of chief's mind, and the reader has an intimate knowledge of the metaphor and motif of "The machine". This allows the reader to get to know chief much more well than the viewer of the film. The film creates a void between the watcher and chief by not "letting them in" to chief's mind, which means that the film doesn't express chief's angst and schizophrenia as well as the novel. In the novel we are constantly taken through chief's stream of consciousness and are enriched with a wide range of literary description and devices that the film can't express similarly.