The “La Vie en rose” team Didier Lavergne and Jan Archibald, who won Oscars this year, fielded questions in French. “Sometimes the language was a bit of a barrier; my French is very poor,” Archibald said. “It was a challenge, and a wonderful challenge.”

Ben Morris of “The Golden Compass” admitted to being surprised at the film's victory for Special Effects. They offered that “Golden Compass” might have won because “There was a lot of spectacle in the other films and there's a lot of delicate performance and intimacy in this film, and I think that stood out.”

Art Direction winners Dante Ferretti and Francesa Lo Schiavo won the Oscar three years ago for their work on Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic “The Aviator.” This year they won the Oscar for “Sweeney Todd.”

In 1949, “The Heiress” competed for the Best Picture Oscar with “All the King's Men,” which won, the marriage satire “A Letter to Three Wives,” and two WWII films, “Battleground” and “Twelve O'Clock High.”

Hugh Welchman, producer of winning Animated Short “Peter and the Wolf,” said, “I was actually just grinning from ear to ear,” at the podium onstage. “It felt just exciting. I thought it was going to be scary, but it was exciting.”