Vienna - Vienna's classic Gartenbau Cinema erupted into loud cheers and thundering applause at 4.40 am (0340 GMT) when in Los Angeles Oscar award presenter Penelope Cruz read out the surprise winner for best foreign film. Thus came to pass what many of the approximate 500 film lovers who had gathered at the city's largest arthouse cinema to watch a live late-night broadcast of the Oscar gala had not dared hope: Stefan Ruzowitzky's Holocaust drama The Counterfeiters made it the first ever Austrian movie to win the much-coveted award.
Winning the Oscar was "the best thing that could happen to a filmmaker," Ruzowitzky said. "It is a childhood dream come true. This is as good as it gets."
But it did not take long for reality to sink in - reminding Austrians of The Counterfeiter's dire topic and even more so that many of Hollywood's past film-making greats had been Austrian emigrants fleeing the Nazis.
The first moments of speechless surprise by Austrian dignitaries and media soon turned into a flood of praise and jubilant congratulations, often paired with sober promises to now - really - do something to help the country's ailing movie industry.
Film has led a shadowy existence in the country that brought forth geniuses such as Billy Wilder, Fred Zinnemann and Otto Preminger, many of whom had to flee the Nazi regime, the precise topic of Ruzowitzky's movie.
In a press release, Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer said the Academy Award showed that politics had to improve promoting national and European film production. Culture Minister Claudia Schmied said the Oscar was a "very joyous occasion, and makes us proud of our film culture."
The last Austrian movie to be nominated in this category was 38: Home to the Realm by Wolfgang Glueck, 22 years ago. In 2006, Hubert Sauper's Darwin's Nightmare made it onto the Best Documentary nominations.
For Hans Hurch, head of the Viennale, the country's leading film festival, the Oscar meant that Austrian film has finally caught up in recognition with other fields of art and culture, he was quoted as saying by the Austrian press agency.
Austrian media was torn between celebrating Ruzowitzy's triumph as a "sensational triumph in red-white-red" as the tabloid Kronen Zeitung put it - or focusing on the "33rd Austrian success in 112 nominations," as the Austrian press agency wrote, lumping together all awards ever won by expat Austrian directors or Austrian actors in foreign productions.
For many Austrians, forcefully reminded by Ruzowitzky doffing his hat to all of those driven away by the Nazis in his Oscar speech, the celebrations were also a not-so-joyful reminder of its past, the soul-searching and atonement still necessary.
The alpine yellow press on the other hand had less qualms of celebrating a well-deserved triumph: "First Austrian Oscar since Billy Wilder 20 years ago," Kronen Zeitung wrote referring to Hollywood's Irving G Thalberg Memorial Award that Wilder won for lifetime achievement. "Austria takes home the Oscar."
