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The other top winners: Kate Winslet, Best Actress for the Holocaust-themed drama "The Reader"; Sean Penn, Best Actor for the title role of "Milk"; Heath Ledger, Supporting Actor for "The Dark Knight"; and Penelope Cruz, Supporting Actress for "Vicky Cristina.
Read more about 'Slumdog Millionaire.
Maybe it was the adorable smile on that "Slumdog Millionaire" kid in his pint-sized tuxedo.
Or best director winner Danny Boyle bouncing in silly tribute to Tigger of "Winnie the Pooh."
The grinning, top-hatted dad of best actress winner Kate Winslet, whistling like a champion to get his daughter's attention.
Or an entire crowd standing together in remembrance of Heath Ledger.
This year's Oscar telecast was striking for its many feel-good themes and moments -- and perhaps exactly what we needed from a recession-era awards show.
Certainly, it was a notable contrast to last year, when darkness and cynicism ruled the nominated films, capped by best picture winner "No Country for Old Men," about a homicidal sociopath. The collective subject matter was so bleak that host Jon Stewart was inspired to say of "Juno," the one comedy: "Thank goodness for teen pregnancy!"
This year's host, Hugh Jackman, had no such trouble. He presided over a show filled with Cinderella themes both fictional and real-life. And none was more poignant than that of the night's big winner, "Slumdog Millionaire," with its story of love triumphing over desperate poverty, criminality and pure evil.
Lost on no one at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre, of course, was the Cinderella-like story of the movie itself, which nearly became a victim of the tanking economy and was headed for a direct-to-DVD release before News Corp.'s Fox Searchlight stepped in to distribute it.
And there were the many personal stories of those involved in the film. As the cast stood onstage after winning the best picture award, the cameras focused briefly on a beatifically smiling Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, 10, one of the children who'd been whisked to the Oscars from a desperately poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Mumbai, where he lives in a lean-to made of plastic tarpaulins and blankets. One can only imagine how the moment must have felt for his friends and family back home.
It fell to Simon Beaufoy, who won for the film's adapted screenplay, to make the link between our troubled times and the film's appeal.
"It's come out at a time when the value of money, which has been raised to this extraordinary height, is suddenly being shown to be a kind of very shallow thing," Beaufoy said. "The financial markets are crashing around the world, and a film comes out which is ostensibly about being a millionaire. Actually ... it's a film that says there's more important things than money: love, faith and family."
It was a different family -- that of the late Heath Ledger -- that brought tears to many eyes in the most emotional moment of the ceremony, no less affecting because it was expected: Ledger's posthumous Oscar for his diabolical Joker in "The Dark Knight."
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