This year was a great Oscars, with so many great films getting the spotlight. We covered Woody Allen’s only appearance at the awards in our previous video of the week, and we continue to look at Allen at the Oscars this week. His best year was 1978, the 50th Academy Awards ceremony, and the film was Annie Hall, taking home four major awards. Thanks to the wonders of YouTube, you can watch them now.

Diane Keaton won for Best Actress, and was there to accept her award with a very short speech. She beat out:

Anne Bancroft (The Turning Point)
Jane Fonda (Julia)
Shirley MacLaine (The Turning Point)
Marsha Mason (The Goodbye Girl)

Woody Allen took home the prestigious Oscar for Best Directing for Annie Hall. The clip is introduced by Bob Hope, and presented by actress Cicely Tyson and director King Vidor.

Woody Allen beat out some pretty prestigious (and probably higher earning) directors:

Stephen Spielberg (Close Encounters Of the Third Kind)
Fred Zinnemann (Julia)
George Lucas (Star Wars)
Herbert Ross (The Turning Point)

Highlights of the clip include Diane Keaton’s reaction and some truly comedic camera work by the person trying to capture Spielberg.

Jack Nicholson presented the Best Picture nomination. Allen’s long time producer Charles H Joffe accepted the award with his long time partner Jack Rollins. The other nominations were:

The Goodbye Girl
Julia
Star Wars
The Turning Point

Hoffe makes a lovely speech about the artistry of Allen. Rollins talks about how great it is for the Oscar to go to a comedy, and how it’s a step in the right direction. It turned out to be an oddity – no comedy has ever won Best Picture again.

The Oscars uploading people haven’t put up the clip for the fourth award, to Allen and Marshall Brickman, for Best Original Screenplay.

They do have a clip from documentarian RJ Cutler chose it as his Oscars moment.

Allen, of course, has won many more Oscars. But it was the defining night for Woody Allen – and he wasn’t even there.