The Shape Of Water named best picture at 'Goldilocks' Academy Awards

Australian film editor Lee Smith poses with his Oscar.

And despite a glowing Oscar campaign, Australian filmmakers Derin Seale and Josh Lawson, who were nominated for their live-action short film The Eleven O'Clock, were pipped at the post by Frank Stiefel's Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405.

Speaking backstage, Smith acknowledged the opportunities the Australian film industry gave him on his path to Hollywood, and paid tribute to mentors such as Peter Weir, Phil Noyce, Jane Campion and George Miller. To get here is the sum of all those parts," he said

Though the night felt marked with firsts, some did not have their moment of glory.

Mudbound's cinematographer Rachel Morrison, the first woman nominated in the category in 90 years, did not win; she lost to Roger Deakins who shot Blade Runner 2049. And Lady Bird's Greta Gerwig, only the fifth female director ever nominated in the best director category, lost to Guillermo del Toro.

And yet #MeToo was subtly present, even if it was not explicitly named.

Last year's best actor winner Casey Affleck, who was accused of sexual harassment in 2010, was not there to present best actress, so Jane Fonda and Helen Mirren did; last year's best actress winner Emma Stone did not present best actor, as is the tradition, but rather best director, perhaps because one of the nominated actors Gary Oldman - who won - was accused of domestic violence in 2001.

Gary Oldman poses in the press room with the award for best performance by an actor in a motion picture - drama for Darkest Hour.
Photo: Jordan Strauss

And accepting the best actress Oscar, Frances McDormand asked all of the female nominees in every category to stand, leaning on the room's unequivocal grand dame to get the ball rolling.

"Meryl, if you do it everybody else will," McDormand said.

And after a well publicised awards season peppered with some consistent winners, it felt like many of the night's key winners were locked into position well in advance, such as Alison Janney (I, Tonya) and Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water).

But others went into film's night of nights in a more competitive field, notably Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), who edged out Willem Dafoe and Christopher Plummer, and Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour), who beat Daniel Day-Lewis and Daniel Kaluuya to best actor.

Sam Rockwell, left, and Frances McDormand in a scene from Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
Photo: Fox Searchlight via AP

The telecast's "in memoriam" segment acknowledged a number of high-profile personalities who had died in the last year, including singer songwriter Chuck Berry, producer Jill Messick, director Jonathan Demme and actors Harry Dean Stanton, Martin Landau, Roger Moore, Jeanne Moreau and Jerry Lewis.

And perhaps as an antidote to a year of difficult headlines, and to mark the nine-decade long history of the Oscars, the telecast leaned heavily on the Hollywood establishment, peppering the telecast with legends including Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, Rita Moreno and Eva Marie Saint.

"I just realised ... I am older than the Academy," Saint said.

The telecast host Jimmy Kimmel kicked off proceedings with both guns gently blazing, not overly political but touching on some of the room's biggest elephants: the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the gender salary disparity, illustrated by the vastly different reshoot paychecks for Mark Wahlberg and Michelle Williams on the (now) ironically titled All The Money in the World.

Kimmel also acknowledged last year's best picture fiasco in which the wrong film was named, describing it as "the most calamitous moment in Oscar history"; the two presenters of that segment, Beatty and Dunaway, returned for what the film industry would call a second take.

"As they say, presenting is lovelier the second time around," Dunaway said.

Best picture went to The Shape of Water, which may surprise the film cognoscenti who widely tipped Three Billboards, but it is consistent with The Shape of Water's win at the Producer's Guild of America awards; the PGA's best film has sync'd with Oscar 19 of the last 28 years, close to a 70 per cent success rate.

Noting that Oscar - that is, the iconic gold statue - is now 90 years old, Kimmel said he was most likely "at home watching Fox News".

Kimmel also called Oscar the most respected man in Hollywood. "He keeps his hands where you can see them, he never says a rude word and he has no penis at all," he said. "He is a statue of limitations."

Doug Jones and Sally Hawkins in the film The Shape of Water.

On the incredible success of the film Black Panther, Kimmel also said he remembered a time when Hollywood studios did not believe a woman or a minority actor could open a movie. "I remember that time because it was March last year," he said.

And as a rebuttal to those who think Hollywood is populated by out-of-touch elites, Kimmel said each of the 45,000 Swarovski crystals on the stage backdrop "represents humility".

FULL LIST OF WINNERS

Best picture:Shape of Water
Best director: Guillermo del Toro, The Shape of Water
Best actor: Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour
Best actress: Frances McDormand, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best supporting actor: Sam Rockwell, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Best supporting actress: Allison Janney, I, Tonya
Best original screenplay:Get Out, Jordan Peele
Best adapted screenplay:Call Me by Your Name (James Ivory)
Best foreign-language film:A Fantastic Woman, Chile
Best animated feature:Coco
Best documentary feature:Icarus
Best cinematography:Blade Runner 2049, Roger Deakins
Best film editing:Dunkirk, Lee Smith
Best sound mixing:Dunkirk
Best sound editing:Dunkirk
Best visual effects:Blade Runner 2049
Best makeup and hairstyling:Darkest Hour, Kazuhiro Tsuji
Best costume design:Phantom Thread (Mark Bridges)
Best production design:The Shape of Water
Best original score:The Shape of Water, Alexandre Desplat
Best original song:Remember Me (Coco)
Best live-action short:The Silent Child, Chris Overton and Rachel Shenton
Best animated short:Dear Basketball, Glen Keane and Kobe Bryant
Best documentary short:Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405, Frank Stiefel