The quiet Oscars - Hollywood silent again.

 The quiet Oscars- Hollywood silent again. 

Camera, lights, action. Yes folks it's that time of the year again. In glitzy, glittering, glamorous Hollywood, Los Angeles the stars were out there in the firmament, smiling broadly, grinning almost incessantly and pleased as Punch. Once again that vast acting community slapped themselves on the back and indulged in yet more self congratulation. Sadly though, Hollywood was as quiet as a library, a grim setting for the  actors and actresses who ply their trade in front of the cameras, unfortunate victims of circumstances but nonetheless puffed up with delusions of grandeur, always recognising that they were still the centre of attention. 

Throughout the years, decades and another century, the great and good of the Hollywood merry go round have touched and moved us with their breathtaking brilliance and wondrous acting dexterity. The honorary likes of James Stewart, Cary Grant, Burt Lancaster, Paul Newman, Gregory Peck, John Wayne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Bette Davis, Lana Turner, Meryl Streep and everybody who has ever been associated with Hollywood greatness, will never be forgotten but last night it all looked as if everybody had been run out of the Wild West saloon once occupied by John Wayne and disappeared.

Last night the yearly film fest that is the Oscars award ceremony parked itself on a deserted car park, trying to pretend that all was well but privately grieving another Covid 19, bio-secure bash. This is not the way it should have been and we're all painfully aware of the underlying reasons for this no show. But the ceremony was still given the green light even though it may just as well have been in black and white. 

Now we had the spectacle of well rewarded film stars sheepishly accepting their fate because there was no other way of completing the evening. They were all elegantly dressed of course they were virtually, dinner jackets, shirts and ties in impeccable taste while the ladies smiled dutifully in their fashionable, designer influenced dresses. But somehow the Oscars went ahead although you would never have known it. 

There were no flashing cameras, no microphones the size of the conventional Hollywood mansion and none of the fixtures and fittings of stardom, the trappings of celebrity that normally goes hand in hand with the Oscars. There were no red carpets, none of what some would describe as its enduring superficiality and therefore nothing to talk about. We could have sung the praises of the celebs who did make it for the ceremony but that wouldn't really have done any justice for what really happened. It was a show but then again this was more of a show without the necessary supporting acts. 

This was a parody of the Oscars, an unavoidably downsized and very downcast Oscars, an almost lifeless occasion where some of the more legendary names of Hollywood past and present were struggling with their anxieties, their frustrations and then there was that unmistakable desire to be the most outstanding star on the night. The feverish audience they may have become accustomed to had now been reduced to a video conference call and their faces had been narrowed to a square in front of your TV screen. 

But strikingly there was one of  Britain's greatest of all thespians. Sir Anthony Hopkins is quite possibly one of the most versatile film stars the United Kingdom has ever produced in recent times. Hopkins will always be renowned for his role as that sinister looking character in Silence of the Lambs, a man who came face to face with Jody Foster and hissed like a snake in the famous prison scene. 

Little has been seen of Hopkins for well over a year since the whole of the film industry had now been shut down for the duration, studios locked down and friendships temporarily put on hold because of coronavirus. But Hopkins has been working tirelessly and the result was 'For the Father', a story about a man suffering from dementia and all the attendant heartache that comes with this debilitating disease. Olivia Colman, another remarkable actress, plays her part wonderfully and with immense assurance. 

The Best Actress Oscar went to Frances Mcdomand and the best film was Nomadland while Chloe Zhao became the first Asian woman to become Best Director. And so it was that the Oscars of 2021 was over for another year barely noticeable if truth be told. There were no emotionally heartrending acceptance speeches to a huge audience and there were no novel length thankyous that normally take us deep into the following morning when most of the caretakers had gone home and the lights were switched off at midnight. There's no business like no showbusiness like no business we know or so the song goes. Where are you cinema? We've been missing you so much.