Icarus File No. 29: 1776 (dir by Peter R. Hunt)

Posted on July 1, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The year is 1776. The British have landed in Canada and are now marching towards New York with the intention of putting down a revolultion that has sprung up over issues like unfair taxation. In Philadelphia, John Adams (William Daniels) is frustrated by the refusal the second Continental Congress to take up debate on whether or not the 13 North American colonies should announce their official independence from Britian. Every day, Adams steps into the chamber and demands that the Congress take some action. And, every day, his fellow deletates sing, “Sit down, John!”

Yes, you read that correctly. They sing it.

Based on a 1969 Broadway musical, 1776 features a lot of singing, a lot talking, and not much else. This is a film about the debate surrounding the writing of the Declaraiton of Independence that sometimes feels as if it’s telling its story in real time. It’s no shock when Benjaming Franklin (Howard Da Silva) continually falls asleep at his desk or when Thomas Jefferson (Ken Howard) sings that he’d rather be home. This is a nearly 3-hour film that feels like 3 months. Some films about the Revolutionary War emphasize the brilliance of the Founding Fathers. Some films emphazie the struggle to be free. Other films emphasize the daily violence of serving in the army. 1776 captures the monotony of being trapped in a room full of cranky middle-aged men who will not stop talking. The film dutifully captures every debate and controversy. When John Adams shouts at everyone to get on with it, it’s hard not to sympathize until you realize that Adams himself is a huge reason why nothing ever seems to get done. There’s only so many hours in the day that can be devoted to singing songs.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about 1776 is that it was realsed in 1972. Nothing about 1776 suggests that it’s a product of the same era in which Bob Fosse was redefining the musical with Caberet and Francis Ford Coppola was refefining the historial epic with The Godfather and John Boorman was risking the lives of Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight to capture a weekend rafting trip. There’s nothing about Peter R. Hunt’s direction to suggest that this film was made in the same era that saw Robert Altman playfully reinventing genres ranging from the service comedy to the detective film to the ensemble musical. At a time when American directors were rebelling against convention and experimenting with new ways to tell stories, 1776 is a lengthy, dramatically inert and stagebound Broadway adaptation. In style and look, it feels like a cinematic product of the 1950s or the early 60s, a film that was made when Hollywood’s only competition was from television. Even Thomas Jefferson’s longing for his wife (Blythe Danner) is played discreetly. When she finally does show up in Philadelphia, Jefferson closes the shudders. When John Adams and Benjamin Franklin notice that the shudders are still closed hours later, it’s treated as a moment for everyone in the audience to turn red as they try not to giggle. They’re having sex, the audience is meant to think, Good thing they’re married! It’s a moment that feels as natural and human as Sandra Dee looking over her shoulder and winking as she goes off with Troy Donahue.

The key to understanding 1776 is to be found in the opening credits. “Produced by Jack Warner.” By the time 1776 went into production, Warner had been a Hollywood mogul for 54 years. He started his career in the silent era and he built Warner Brothers into one of Hollywood’s most successful studios. When he was younger, he was the one breaking the rules, making gangster movies and turning actor like James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and Edward G. Robinson into stars. However, by the time he made 1776, Warner was the last of a dying breed. Despite having greenlit Bonnie and Clyde, one of the seminal “Now Hollywood” productions, the older Jack Warner had little use for the Hollywood counterculture. 1776 was reportedly a pet project for Jack Warner, a film that he took a strong hand in producting and which he expected would sweep the box office and the Oscars. Warner recruited the majority of the show’s Broadway cast to appear in the film. Warner personally ordered the remove of a musical number that seemed to discreetly critcize the Vietnam War. Warner even went on TV to promote the film. During an interview on the Merv Griffin Show, Warner launched into a triade about “pinko commies.” I imagine Warner had a point about the communists but it still was probably not the right way to promote the film in the 1970s. While other films invited the counterculture into Hollywood, 1776 was essentially Jack Warner shouting, “Stay off my lawn!” with the voice of William Daniels.

1776 was a last attempt to hold onto the old way of making movies. It was a film about a revolution that was desgined to thwart another revolution. The Continental Congress was menaced by the British. Jack Warner was menaced by the shadows of Coppola, Scorsese, and Friedkin. It would be Jack Warner’s final film as a producer. He died in 1974, still one of the towering figures in the history of Hollywood. Of the old time moguls, only Adolph Zuker and Darryl F. Zanuck outlasted Jack Warner.

When Hamilon first came out in 2025, it was often described as being the antidote to 1776. Hamilton was entertaining where 1776 was stodgy. Well, maybe. 1776 may lack great songs but it doesn’t really have any truly bad ones either. Instead, it’s just a very middle-of-the-road show, inoffensive and designed to keep the tourits happy. Hamilton was viewed as being revolutionary when it was released but now it feels a bit gimmicky, with both the show and the almost religious initial enthusiasm for it feeling like somewhat embarassing artifacts from a different era. (From the coverage during the Hamilton’s heyday, you would think no one but Lin-Manuel Miranda had ever written about Alexander Hamilton or Aaron Burr before.) There is a great film to be made about the Continental Congress but it probably doesn’t invovle any singing.

As for 1776, William Daniels is amusing when he gets frusrated and Blythe Danner is far prettier than the real Martha Jefferson and the film itself is a forgettable tribute to the great men who foudned a great country.

Previous Icarus Files:

Funny Farm (1988, directed by George Roy Hill)

Posted on June 13, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Andy Farmer (Chevy Chase) is a New York sports writer who leaves the city and moves to the small town of Rosebud, Vermont so that he can work on his novel. He and his wife, Elizabeth (Madolyn Smith), struggle to adjust to living in a small town. The delivery of their furniture is delayed by the collapse of a covered bridge. When they try to make a phone call from inside their own house, the local operator tells them to deposit ten cents. They were expecting a Norman Rockwell-type town and instead, they find themselves having to pay for the funeral of a man who was buried on their property long before they moved in. When Elizabeth makes more progress writing a children’s book than Andy does with his heist novel, their marriage starts to feel the strain.

Chevy Chase is now so much better known for the stories of his unprofessional and diva-like behavior on film and television sets that it’s easy to forget that he was, at his peak, a very funny actor. Chase may be playing a variation of his put-upon everyman but, compared to the first two Vacation movies, most of the humor in Funny Farm is very mild. George Roy Hill was a classy director who had been making movies since the 50s and Funny Farm feels like a throwback to the type of family-friendly comedies that Disney would make in the 60s. That I laughed as much as I did was largely due to Chase’s performance. Whether he was tripping over a Dutch door, reacting to his wife’s dislike of the first few chapters of his new novel, or offering to pay the townspeople $50 to pretend to be nice for a weekend, Chase was consistently funny and even likable. I don’t know if this is the type of performance that Chevy Chase could give today. There’s a bitterness that’s now integral to screen persona and it’s made him into someone who audience want to laugh at instead of with. It’s too bad because Funny Farm is a reminder of the type of comedic actor that Chevy Chase used to be and who he probably still could be if not for the failed talk show and the infamous Friar’s Club roast.

As for Funny Farm, it’s an amusing and likable comedy and it still holds up well today. Chase is the key to the film’s success but he’s not the only reason that the film works. I liked the scene where Mike Starr and Glenn Plummer, as the two movers, watch as the bridge they tried to drive over collapses. I even liked the running joke about the two ducks who refused to leave the Farmers’s property. Funny Farm may not have been a hit when it was first released but it’s since built up a cult following. There will always be a place for a funny comedy that leaves you in a good mood.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Winner: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (dir by Milos Forman)

Posted on October 29, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Technically, the 1975 film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is not a horror film.

Though it may take place in a creepy mental hospital, there are no ghosts or zombies. There’s no masked killer wandering the halls. The shadows do not leap off the walls and there are no ghostly voice in the night, unless you count the rarely heard voice of Will Sampson’s Chief Bromden.

Admittedly, the cast is full of horror and paranormal veterans. Michael Berryman, of the original Hills Have Eyes, plays a patient. Louise Fletcher, who won an Oscar for playing the role of Nurse Ratched, went on to play intimidating matriarchs in any number of low-budget horror movies. Vincent Schiavelli, a patient in this film, played the angry subway ghost in Ghost. Another patient, Sidney Lassick, played Carrie’s condescending English teacher in Carrie. Brad Dourif, who received an Oscar nomination for playing the meek Billy Bibbit, has become a horror mainstay. Will Sampson appeared in the Poltergeist sequel. Both Scatman Crothers and Jack Nicholson would go on to appear in The Shining.

Nicholson plays Randle Patrick McMurphy, a career criminal who, hoping to get out of prison early, pretends to be mentally ill. He ends up getting sent to an Oregon mental institution, where his rebellious ways upset the administrators while, at the same time, inspiring the patients to actually try to take some control over their lives. The film is, in many ways, a celebration of personal freedom and rebellion. The only catch here is that, in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, being a little bit too rebellious can lead to not only electroshock treatment but also a lobotomy. Those in charge have a way of making you permanently compliant.

And really, to me, that’s what makes One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest a horror film. It’s about the horror of conformity and bureaucracy. The film may start out as something of a comedy and Nicholson brings a devil-may-care attitude to the role of McMurphy but then, eventually, you reach the scene where McMurphy is tied down and given electrical shocks to make him compliant. You reach the scene where Ratched coldly informs Billy Bibbit that she will be telling his mother that Billy lost his virginity to a prostitute and Billy reacts by slicing open his wrists. Finally, you reach the scene where McMurphy returns to the ward having had a bit of his brain removed. In those scenes, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest becomes a horror movie. The monster is not a ghost or a demon or a serial killer. Instead, it’s a system that is determined to squash out any bit of rebellion or free thought.

What makes Nurse Ratched such a great villain is the fact that, as opposed to being some sort of a maniacal force of evil, she’s really just someone doing her job and refusing to question her methods. She’s the ultimate symbol of bland authoritarianism. Her job is to keep the patients from getting out of control and, if that means lobotomizing them and driving one of them to suicide …. well, that’s what she’s going to do. For all the time that Ratched spends talking about therapy, her concern is not “curing” the patients or even helping them reach a point where they can leave the hospital and go one with their lives. Ratched’s concern is keeping everyone in their place. As played by Fletcher, Ratched epitomizes the banality of evil. (That’s one reason why it was so silly for Ryan Murphy to devote his most recent Netflix series to giving her an over-the-top origin story. Ratched is a great villain because she doesn’t have any complex motivations. She’s just doing whatever she has to do to keep control of the people are on her ward. Part of keeping control is not to allow anyone to question her methods. Everyone has had to deal with a Nurse Ratched at some point in the life. With the elections coming up, we’re about to be introduced to whole new collection of Nurse Ratcheds.)

I like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, even though it’s an undeniably dated film. That said, it’s not as dated as the novel on which it’s based, nor is it as appallingly misogynistic. Jack Nicholson’s rough but charismatic performance holds up wonderfully well. (I don’t know if an actor has ever matched a character as perfectly as Nicholson does with McMurphy.) Louise Fletcher brings a steely resolve to the role of Nurse Ratched. Fans of spotting character actors in early roles will probably get a kick out of spotting both Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd as patients. The movie skillfully combines drama with comedy and the ending manages to be both melancholy and hopeful.

When it comes to the 1975 Oscar race …. well, I don’t know if I would argue that One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest deserved to win Best Picture over Nashville, Dog Day Afternoon, or Barry Lyndon or Jaws. Dog Day Afternoon and Nashville feel as if they were ahead of their time, with their examination of the media and politics. Jaws set the template for almost every blockbuster that would follow and it’s certainly one of the most influential horror films ever made. Barry Lyndon is a stunning technical achievement. Compared to those films, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest seems rather simplistic. Watching it today, you’re very much aware of how much of the film’s power is due to Jack Nicholson’s magnetic screen presence. Nicholson definitely deserved his Oscar but it’s debatable whether or not the same can be said of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest as a whole.

So no, I wouldn’t necessary say that One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was the best of the films nominated that year. Still, it’s an entertaining film and a helluva ride. It’s a great film to watch whenever you’re sick of faceless bureaucrats trying to tell you what to do. And, in its own odd way, it’s a great film for Halloween season.