A rare moment in cinema when everything goes well and every imaginable talent improbably comes together in unison to create a masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (11 December 2017)

A long-established legend such as this movie deservedly is needs no more reviews. Watching it again recently after many years, however, prompts me to add it to my reviews here.
Many Oscars seem to have been randomly awarded even in much more gilded ages of cinema than the last thirty years. How The Third Man could possibly have only won a single Oscar (deservedly, in 1951, for Robert Krasker's cinematography) has to remain an eternal mystery and embarrassment to the "Academy" - at least Cannes got it right there for that film in 1949. OFOTCNest is a prominent exception, fully deserving to sweep the major Oscars, in 1976 - or in ANY year, even more deservedly than It Happened One Night, in 1935... and certainly more so than the fairly mediocre but amazingly-awarded Silence of the Lambs, in 1992.
As with all the greatest films, OFOTCNest is distinguished by an unforgettable (though not very prominent, eerily piping in at the beginning and end of the film) musical score, by exceptional casting and acting performances, and - what's markedly lacking in most films - an unforgettable ending. And the story of its making, involving the full cooperation of an enlightened real-life psychiatric institution and its clinical director, is awesome too.
The performances of some of the actual inmates and of a brilliantly disturbed Danny DeVito are standouts, just as Nicholson's and Fletcher's are legendary and defining, and the artistic vision that was required in obtaining such excellence from the entire cast says plenty about the genius of director Milos Forman.
Brilliant as Michael Douglas is as an actor, I doubt anybody could point to a greater achievement than his as a producer of this risky project. Who wouldn't feel eternally successful in their life simply in total to have had such a role in the making of this masterpiece?
Of course, the world only swings between extremes. The archaic national mental health policy of inhuman institutionalization that this movie scathingly criticizes was - largely as a result of this very film - soon after terminated, merely releasing inmates onto the streets and condemning them to sleep under bridges.
Like The Third Man, this is a rare moment in the complicated art of cinema in which everything goes right, and every imaginable talent improbably comes together in unison to create an undying masterpiece.