The big winner at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre was "No Country for Old Men," Joel and Ethan Coen's downbeat film about a psychotic killer (Javier Bardem) on the trail of drug money and pursued by a cagey sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones). "No Country for Old Men" won four Oscars: Best Picture, directing and adapted-screenplay honors for the Coens, and a supporting-actor win for Bardem.

Another multiple winner was Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood," a brooding epic starring Daniel Day-Lewis as a ruthless oilman who makes a fortune but loses everything else that matters. Day-Lewis won Best Actor, and Robert Elswit earned an Oscar for his sweeping cinematography.

The French biographical film "La Vie en Rose" won two Oscars - for Marion Cotillard's uncanny portrayal of singer Edith Piaf, and for the makeup that aided in that transformation through 20-plus years of the singer's tragic and too-short life.

Even the popcorn movies that earned Oscars touched on serious themes. "Michael Clayton," which scored a supporting-actress Oscar for Tilda Swinton, was about corporate lawyers who stop at nothing - even murder - to win. "The Bourne Ultimatum," which won in three technical categories, followed Matt Damon's amnesiac assassin into the bowels of corruption and double-dealing within the CIA.

The Oscar winners were all smiles, in spite of the movies' somber subject matter. Many gave humble, sometimes tearful speeches. Day-Lewis honored his grandfather, father and sons. Bardem gave an impassioned speech, in Spanish, to his mother. Diablo Cody, winning the Original Screenplay category for her teen-pregnancy comedy "Juno," cried as she thanked her family "for loving me exactly as I am." Joel Coen thanked the industry for "letting us continue to play in our corner of the sandbox."

Politics didn't pop up often during the ceremony. The Academy paid tribute to U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq by having them read the nominees in the documentary-short category. The only politically-leaning acceptance speech was from director Alex Gibney, who made a political movie: The Documentary Feature winner "Taxi to the Dark Side," an angry examination of U.S. policies regarding torture.

With the notable exceptions of the Coens and Cody, the winners' circle had a European bent: A Spaniard (Bardem), a Frenchwoman (Cotillard), two Brits (Day-Lewis and Swinton), a few Italians (art director Dante Ferretti and composer Dario Marianelli), the first-ever Austrian winner in the foreign-language category (for "The Counterfeiters"), and - in the night's underdog story - Irish songwriter Glen Hansard and Czech-born musician Marketa Irglova taking the Original Song award for their plaintive ballad "Falling Slowly" from the low-budget romance in which they starred, "Once."

But the night's biggest winner was Hollywood itself.

Less than two weeks after a bitter 3-1/2 month-long strike by the Writers Guild of America ended, the Oscar ceremony represented the first chance to restore the illusion of Hollywood as a big happy family of artists - or, as host Jon Stewart called it, "the make-up sex."

The short turnaround time for the ceremony's writing staff - and a general back-to-business mentality - meant there were fewer moments of mindless banter by presenters. It was get out there, give the award, and get off the stage. As a result, the show finished in a relatively short three hours and 17 minutes.