The black-and-white silent movie The Artist scooped up six Cesar awards including best film and best actress on Friday in France's annual version of the Academy Awards, further raising French hopes it could do well at the Oscars this weekend.
A misty-eyed flashback to late 1920s Hollywood, the French-made film has proved an unexpected international success, bagging seven British Bafta awards earlier this month, including best film, and a Golden Globe before that.
It won best director for Michel Hazanavicius at the 37th Cesar ceremony and best actress for Berenice Bejo, who utters no words out loud as she plays a young actress starting out as silent cinema falls out of fashion and is replaced by "talkies".
"This is a film that started out at the very bottom, it's a film nobody wanted to make, and now we are right at the top. It's a beautiful story," Hazanavicius said, receiving his prize.
Argentine-born Bejo, who plays the beguiling Peppy Miller, admitted tearfully that she had desperately wanted to win.
Co-star Jean Dujardin, whose debonair rendition of a silent movie icon has won him Best Actor at Cannes, a Bafta, a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination, was passed over for the best actor Cesar, which went instead to Omar Sy in Intouchables.
