The Oscars went absolutely to plan, with The Artist taking three of the awards that matter most - best picture, best director and best actor - as well as those for costume and original score. Audiences are utterly seduced by its charm and originality.
While Hugo also took five:cinematography (it should have gone to The Tree of Life), art direction, sound editing, visual effects and sound mixing, these are technical awards that will mean little to most cinemagoers, and that's fair enough for an over-deliberated, lecturing film that's nothing like as endearing or amusing as it believes itself to be.
The Oscars always reward correct subject matter as well as achievement (hence the non-appearance of Shame, the nasty study of sex addiction, and even perhaps the vile-child shocker We Need to Talk About Kevin).
Both best supporting actor awards - Octavia Spencer for her part as a rebellious black maid in The Help, and Christopher Plummer, 82, for his role as a man in his seventies coming out as gay in Beginners - show again how the academy wants to feel good about minorities previously slighted.
Altogether the best Oscar-winning film this year is A Separation, the Iranian drama about a couple considering divorce, directed by Asghar Farhadi. Best not to mention what happened to British films. Belfast director Terry George got best live action short for The Shore, about reconciliation after the Troubles, and nobody else got anything. Perhaps we could celebrate Meryl Streep's best actress win for impersonating our own Margaret Thatcher...
