“The Artist” sweeps the Oscars with five awards, including best picture

by Dimitris Ioannou

“The Artist”, the French black-and-white film about Hollywood's silent era, took the top honors at the 84^th Academy Awards on Sunday night, including best picture, best director for Michel Hazanavicius and lead actor for Jean Dujardin. “The Artist” is the first silent film to claim best picture honors in 83 years, since the first Academy Awards back in 1929, when William A. Wellman's “Wings” took the top prize. Also, this is the first time in Academy Awards history that a French filmmaker and a French actor took the Oscar in both their categories.

Meryl Streep as expected took the best actress award for her great performance as Margaret Thatcher in the film “The Iron Lady”. This was the third Oscar for the actress, who has been nominated for seventeen times since the beginning of her career. In the supporting categories, Christopher Plummer became the oldest actor to win an Academy Award, at the age of 82 for his role in the “Beginners”. The show turned into emotional when Octavia Spencer got on stage to receive the award in her category for the movie “The Help” and the actress started crying and shaking. “Thank you, world!” Spencer said to the audience.

Martin Scorsese and “Hugo” also took five awards of the 11 they were nominated for, tying with “The Artist”, but they were all in technical categories: cinematography, art direction, sound editing, sound mixing and visual effects. The award for best original screenplay went to Woody Allen and his “Midnight in Paris” and the Oscar for best adapted screenplay got the filmmaker of “The Descendants” Alexander Payne and his team, who thanked his mother in Greek!

The host of the evening Billy Crystal, achieved to deliver a funny and interesting show. In his opening montage, Crystal appeared in some of this years biggest movies, such as “The Artist”, “Hugo”, “The Descendants”, “The Help” and “Moneyball” among others, while in the almost five minutes video Tom Cruise, Octavia Spencer, Justin Bieber and George Clooney -who kissed Crystal- appeared as guests. At the ceremony also performed the acrobats and aerialists of Cirque du Soleil, for the first time after 10 years at the Oscars.

The ceremony held at the Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, California and broadcasted live on ABC.

Complete list of winners:

Best Picture

The Artist

Best Actress

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Best Actor

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Supporting Actress

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Supporting Actor

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Best Director

Michel Hazanivicius, The Artist

Best Original Screenplay

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

Best Adapted Screenplay

Alexander Payne, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, The Descendants

Best Foreign Feature

A Separation (Iran)

Best Animated Feature

Rango, Gore Verbinski

Art Direction

Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo, Hugo

Cinematography

Robert Richardson, Hugo

Costume Design

Mark Bridges, The Artist

Documentary Feature

Undefeated, TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay and Richard Middlemas

Documentary Short Subject

Saving Face, Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Film Editing

Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Makeup

Mark Coulier and J. Roy Helland, The Iron Lady

Music (Original Score)

Ludovic Bource, The Artist

Music (Original Song)

"Man or Muppet" from The Muppets, Bret McKenzie

Sound Editing

Philip Stockton and Eugene Gearty, Hugo

Sound Mixing

Tom Fleischman and John Midgley, Hugo

Visual Effects

Rob Legato, Joss Williams, Ben Grossman and Alex Henning, Hugo

Short Film (Animated)

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg

Short Film (Live Action)

The Shore, Terry George and Oorlagh George