Thrilled as I am that Scorsese finally won a sheaf of Oscars for The Departed, I can’t help feeling that a better film left the Kodak theatre with virtually nothing. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s epic thriller, Babel, won a paltry token award for Best Film Score. I’m amazed at how lightly it was dismissed. The film is by no means perfect. It rattles alarmingly between characters and crises on three different continents. Yet it was most exhilarating and original contender by a stretch.

But seasoned Oscar-watchers will not be surprised. The American Academy has been aching to reward Scorsese after thirty years of hurt. The failure to heap awards on both Taxi Driver and Raging Bull has gone down as the most notorious lapse of judgement in award history. Clint Eastwood’s turgid melodramas have managed to frustrate Scorsese’s more recent efforts. But the second instalment of his ambitious World War II double bill, Letters from Iwo Jima, proved too wilfully weird even for Clint’s diehard supporters.

The Departed makes short shrift of lofty values. In fact it makes short shrift of almost the entire cast. It’s a joy to see Scorsese back at his bleak and visceral worst with the kind of testosterone drama he pioneered in Mean Streets. The cynicism runs raw and deep. A lean-looking Leonardo DiCaprio looked as if he had a decent fist around the Best Actor award before Forest Whitaker chopped his hopes off at the knees. At least Whitaker had the grace to admit that his splendid impersonation of Idi Amin in the Last King of Scotland was a once in a lifetime performance. Poor old Peter O’Toole has spent several lifetimes failing to make a once. The honourary Oscar he received several aeons ago will almost certainly be his last. Otherwise it’s been something of a vintage year for the golden oldies. The 2006 winners were uniformly young, brash, and experimental.

This year the Academy noticeably honoured several prodigiously grumpy old men. Alan Arkin’s turn as a filthy-minded grandpa in Little Miss Sunshine won him the Best Supporting Actor. It was an award Jack Nicholson ought to have won as the savoury villain in The Departed. Having turned up to the Oscars with Hollywood’s most trendy haircut – the Britney Spears baldy – he ought to have won something for sheer cheek. Scorsese was far too tense to be amused despite winning a further three gongs for Best Film, Best Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

By any standards that’s an extraordinary quantity of humble pie. Tragically, it seemed to knock the wind out of British hopes. We have rarely had so many Oscar nominations for so many different films within our grasp. The Brits looked like heavyweight champions at the Golden Globes and the Baftas. There has been an arrogant swagger about their procession to the Oscars. Yet on Sunday night they suddenly looked desperately parochial. We went down like Audley Harrison.

Helen Mirren wobbled her way to a fairly predictable but nerve-wracking Best Actress award. Directors Stephen Frears (The Queen) and Paul Greengrass (United 93) were left stranded, tired, emotional, and bemused. Peter Morgan and Patrick Marber – our dead-cert bets at the bookie to land statues for their fiendishly clever screenplays – were rudely booted into touch. And Sacha Baron Cohen -- in the running for some wildly inappropriate prize – probably thought he was at the Derby. At least everyone knew at last what it felt to be part of the Dreamgirls package. Jennifer Hudson emerged from a haystack of award hype with a worthy Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. But the hopes and dreams of this hugely expensive and hotly tipped show were simply left in tatters in the aisles.

There might be a lesson here for the bruised Brits. What struck me is how much our big films look like chamber pieces beside the giant spectacles of Babel and The Departed. Even Pan’s Labyrinth, which seemed to win everything except the prize it deserved, Best Foreign Language film (awarded to The Lives of Others), touches parts our films fail to reach. I’m not sure what the missing magical ingredient is. Just make sure you don’t ask Bill Condon.

* Achievement in music written for motion pictures

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