Los Angeles -- Before Monday night, conventional wisdom had it that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would be scared off by "The Silence of the Lambs'" graphic brutality.
Instead, the voting members seemed to have been as excited as the average moviegoer was by the uncompromising intensity of this psychosexual roller-coaster ride.
It's encouraging evidence that the academy, long known for preferring films it's easy to sleep through, is finally waking up.
"The Silence of the Lambs," then, is the first Best Picture winner in some time to have actually rattled people's cages, as was the evening's biggest "surprise" -- Anthony Hopkins' Best Actor Oscar for his toothsome portrayal of "Silence's" madman, Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
The smart money was on Nick Nolte to save "The Prince of Tides" from a shut-out. But let's, as Dr. Lecter might say, face it: Hollywood sharks, who make up a big proportion of the academy's voting membership, would rather think of themselves as murderous geniuses than as guys with so little control that they'd actually sleep with their shrinks.
Along with Jodie Foster's Best Actress, Jonathan Demme's Best Director and Ted Tally's Best Adapted Screenplay awards, "Silence" also nailed the evening's largest trove of Oscars ("Terminator 2" was second with four of the little gold-plated guys).
More remarkable, "Silence" is the first movie to nab all five top categories it was eligible for since 1975's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and only the third in history to do so ("It Happened One Night," 1934, was the first).
The election of a movie as provocative, sense-assaulting and cinematically exciting as "Silence" signals a welcome move toward hipness for the traditionally stodgy academy. And talk about being essentially '90s: "Silence" is the second $100 million-plus grossing Orion Pictures release in a row to win the Best Picture Oscar, following 1990's "Dances With Wolves."
Orion, in Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, is essentially out of business.
The show itself evoked the evening's fast and smart overall tone. From host Billy Crystal's mercifully minimalist (and, another Oscar tradition-breaker, genuinely funny) opening production number to the surprise guest appearance of "The Addams Family's" Thing, this year's ceremony, along with most of the awards handed out, was unusually intelligent, up-to-date and (gasp) artistically sound.
