{"id":9342,"date":"2018-04-16T15:37:34","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T13:37:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=9342"},"modified":"2018-04-16T15:38:28","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T13:38:28","slug":"milos-forman-obituary-oscar-winning-director-of-one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest-and-amadeus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2018\/04\/milos-forman-obituary-oscar-winning-director-of-one-flew-over-the-cuckoos-nest-and-amadeus\/","title":{"rendered":"Milo\u0161 Forman obituary Oscar-winning director of One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest and Amadeus"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Guardian<\/a><\/div>\n
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When Milo\u0161 Forman, who has died aged 86, travelled to Prague to shoot the film\u00a0Amadeus<\/a>\u00a0in 1984, it was the first time he had set foot in his homeland for 16 years. He had fled communist Czechoslovakia in 1968 just before the Russians\u00a0put an end to the Prague Spring<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the US, when he was offered\u00a0One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest<\/a>\u00a0(1975), set in a state psychiatric hospital, he saw it as a metaphor for the conformist society from which he had escaped. Forman identified with McMurphy (Jack Nicholson<\/a>), the grinning antihero fighting the system as represented by Nurse Ratched, played with chilling authority by Louise Fletcher. McMurphy is finally lobotomised after attempting to throttle the nurse, who signified the way totalitarian regimes exact revenge on transgressors. It was something Forman knew about personally, having lived under nazism and Stalinism.<\/p>\n

The picture, made at a cost of $3m, earned more than $50m. It was also the first movie since It Happened One Night (1934) to win all five top Oscars: best picture, best actor (Nicholson), best actress (Fletcher), best director and best screenplay adaptation. It was an especially sweet triumph for Forman, who had been struggling to get work when One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest came along.<\/p>\n