Nicholson Becomes Nurse Ratched in -- "A Few Good Men"

I was watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest recently, and I was struck by one scene in the 1975 Jack Nicholson movie that would, interestingly enough, sound in ANOTHER Jack Nicholson movie made 17 years later: A Few Good Men.

The scene in Cuckoo's Nest comes about 2/3 of the way into the movie. A group of male psychiatrists who advise the head of the mental institution in which Nicholson is being held discuss him. After a few weeks in the mental facility, he doesn't seem to be showing any real signs of mental illness; he's likely trying to avoid a jail term on a work farm. They might as well transfer him out of the mental facility and back to the work farm, and also get rid of his rebellious influence on the REAL mental patients here.

Done deal -- UNTIL the one woman in the room -- Nurse Ratched(Louise Fletcher) calmly pipes up to say no, Nicholson should be kept at the mental facility. "We shouldn't hand off our problems to someone else," she says, or something like that. Let's keep him here.

Zoom forward to A Few Good Men. Early in that film Marine colonel Jack Nicholson is being told about a fearful and rebellious marine recruit who is having problems adjusting to military life. Nicholson's aide suggests that "Santiago be transferred." And Nicholson becomes Nurse Ratched. No, he suggests, "we shouldn't hand off our problems to someone else," he says, or something like that. Let's keep him here.

It was striking to see, in the older Nurse Ratched scene, the seeds of the Nicholson scene in A Few Good Men. One wonders if playwright/screenwriter Aaron Sorkin was influenced by the one scene in writing the other.

As it turns out, both Nicholson's Randle McMurphy(in Cuckoo's Nest) and Santiago(in A Few Good Men) suffer for being denied transfer. And Nurse Ratched and Nicholson's Colonel Jessup end up joined as "abusers of their authority," downright evil power trippers who think they are doing the right thing by "dealing with their rebels."