Special: The overblown world of Oscars

This year the Academy Awards is a salutary lesson to anyone who ever complained that Hollywood does not do enough to celebrate world cinema. Providing that a piece of the world's film is an hour and a half-long celebration of Hollywood, it might even win best picture.

It is a mark of how gloriously Daft Oscar became that the ceremony can be a victory for a French film - and silent, black-and-white, come to that - to feel like a predictable, self-administered slap on the back to the American film industry. In fact, both of this year's most garlanded films has been described as "love letters to the movies", and the affection shown to both of the Academy was certainly mutual billet-doux.

The artist, Michel Hazanavicius the irrepressibly charming celebration of silent films, she received honors for Best Picture and Best Director, along with awards for its leading man Jean Dujardin, his score and his costume design. Martin Scorsese's Hugo, a moist eye, 3D tribute to film French founding fathers, has won the expected raft of technical trophies for its visual effects, sound editing, sound mixing, art direction and cinematography. As someone who was Scorsese's first foray into three dimensions coolly impressive, if not particularly moving, and that tap-danced around Leicester Square with a mischievous glee after seeing the artist, this was quite a fair result.

Infuriatingly, this year's Oscar ceremony offered very little scope for real disgruntlement: the majority of the winners was no less worthy than they were inevitable. A Separation, a fairly buzzed Iranian drama now riper for remaking than ever, it was praiseworthy choice for Best Foreign Language Film, and Christopher Plummer, and Octavia Spencer's legal victories in the actor and actress categories cap a long winning streaks for both stars, who have taken in the Golden Globes and the Baftas. (Plummer, at 82 the oldest actor to win an Oscar, jokingly asked his trophy, "You're only two years older than I am, my dear - where have you been my life?", And therefore took top honors in the unofficial and is not -that-hot-contested Best Speech category.)

The evening of two injustices have been stressful, but hardly unexpected. A wan Descendants script took best screenplay adapted over the infinitely more acute, pithier, punchier Moneyball, and the exciting art-historicity of the artist original script came second to the Elephantine blatancy of Woody Allen's Midnight In Paris.

Even the surprise result was not particularly surprising. Meryl Streep's roundly deserved win in the Best Actress category, which brings his own Oscar-numbered three, wonder no one except for alleged experts like me, who somehow became convinced that Viola Davis won it for The Help. If there were awards ceremonies for awards ceremonies, Streep would be a Shoo-in for most plausible "Who, me?" Face: she often-repeated gawps of feigned surprise this year was totally convincing.

During the year in which the Academy celebrated the foundations on which the film industry was built - the French vaudeville roots, the glory of the silent era, Meryl Streep winning things - the ceremony itself was properly an ancient. Hosting for the ninth time since his 1990 debut, Billy Crystal certainly preferable to last year catatonic Anne Hathaway, James Franco parade, but his stick seemed surprisingly dated for a man with such a rich harvest of vibrant red hair, tip your head. (Crystal also spoofed all nine of this year's Best Picture nominees in his trademark opening showtune medley, which they feel lasted a bit long enough in the days of five-strong shortlist.)

We are also treated to a wonderfully pointless set of prerecorded black and white interviews - classy! - In which such industry luminaries as Adam Sandler could lecture the assembled likes of Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg on the virtues of the film. "Through my films I am finally trying to one day tell the truth," said the earnest Sandler, whose last picture, the cross-dressing gross-out comedy Jack and Jill, won 11 Razzie nominations last week, including two Worst Actor and Worst Actress.

But while it is easy to be cynical about the faffing and fawning that surrounds the Academy Awards - over the years, the Academy made sure of that - there is nothing wrong in celebrating the awards themselves when they get it right, and The Artist's triumph is just such a case. His victory, much like the film itself, it is unrepeatable trick, one-off, a glorious fluke, a triumph for pure, unadulterated film disguised as an exercise in comfortable nostalgia. To be honest, I have not even sure that Oscar voters fully understand what they were voting for - but I still was glad that they voted for it.

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