HOLLYWOOD, (AFP) — Silent movie The Artist crowned its spectacular awards season success by winning five Oscars, including the coveted Best Picture prize, at the 84th Academy Awards on Sunday.

The French-directed blackand-white movie earned Oscars for best director for Michel Hazanavicius and best actor for Jean Dujardin, who played a silent movie era star whose career was torpedoed by the arrival of the “talkies”.

“I love your country,” Dujardin told the Hollywood audience as he accepted his Oscar, the first for a French actor.

After thanking the film’s cast and crew — adding to “my wife, I love you” — he broke into French, using an expletive and then saying, “Great! Thank you very much!”

In Paris, President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed the French film’s Oscar triumph as a sign of the “tremendous success of French cinema and quality cinema”.

The movie’s success was “witness to the exceptional vitality of our cinema and the success of the government’s policies to support the excellence of this major French industry”, he said.

Martin Scorsese’s 3D adventure Hugo — which had the most nominations, with 11 compared to 10 for The Artist — also ended the evening with five prizes, but all of them came in technical categories.

Meryl Streep won best actress for her powerful turn as former British premier Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, earning a standing ovation from the A-list Hollywood audience.