It took the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Academy 74 years to award a Best Actress Oscar to an African-American. And last Sunday night, it seemed to take almost that long to give it to Halle Berry — the broadcast lasted four hours and 23 minutes, the longest in Oscar history (also the one with the lowest audience rating). When Denzel Washington won for Best Actor, the first African-American to be so honored since Sidney Poitier (who received a career-achievement Oscar on Sunday; his speech was the evening’s classiest moment) in 1963, it seemed almost an afterthought.

So much for the big question: was John Nash an anti-Semite?

Had Hollywood scripted the Oscar-night scenario, it could not have done a better job. For one thing, the outcome dispelled the "scandal" of the "smear campaign" against A Beautiful Mind. Nobody cares anymore whether Ron Howard distorted the facts of John Nash’s life or even whether John Nash existed (he was in the audience with his wife, Alicia). For another, the brouhaha over Russell Crowe’s boorishness faded before the significance of Washington’s triumph.

Such masterful spin: the impression of Hollywood as the kind of place where powerful men would torment a 73-year-old schizophrenic in order to win a gold statuette gives way to the vision of a bastion of enlightenment. What might have seemed the spiteful punishing of an individual for maverick behavior (does it make sense to give A Beautiful Mind every prize except the one it might have deserved? of the three performances Crowe has been nominated for, is the one in Gladiator really his best?) looks instead like high-mindedness. Had Akiva Goldsman not already won it, the script for this show could have won an Oscar for best adapted hypocrisy.

And so the 2001 Oscars are now a historic occasion. For a moment it looked as if it might be a hysteric occasion as Berry, more tightly wrapped than her Elie Saab ball gown, seemed about to continue the violent weeping tantrum that had been shown in her clip from Monster’s Ball. In one of the evening’s unremarked moments of grace, presenter Russell Crowe, the monster himself, embraced and comforted her, and she recovered enough to enjoy the privilege of Best Actress divas from Greer Garson (still the record holder for longest acceptance speech at five and a half minutes, for Mrs. Miniver in 1942) to Julia Roberts (maybe not the longest speech, but the most insufferable) by taking more than her allotted time. Don’t talk to me of time, she proclaimed, we waited 74 years; there’s time for me to thank my lawyers.

It wasn’t quite up to the Martin Luther King "I have a dream" level of history-making that was demonstrated earlier in the documentary-film-montage tribute (which consisted, apparently, of all the films that never won a Best Documentary Oscar). But Washington’s blithe eloquence made up for Berry’s self-dramatization, and the two performances themselves were, in my opinion, the best of those nominated.

Quality, of course, never has been much of a factor in these things. Image is everything. And in that regard, these two roles are troublesome. (Those of you who will be in the 25 percent box-office bump that films average after winning an Oscar should probably stop reading here to avoid plot spoilers.)

Take Washington’s corrupt cop in Training Day. He starts out morally ambiguous and charismatic. He ends up utterly contemptible and evil. It’s kind of like waiting 38 years and getting as the big-screen image of one’s race Hannibal Lecter. Bear in mind, too, that Washington had previously been nominated, and lost, for the title role in 1992’s Malcolm X and for Rubin Carter in 1999’s The Hurricane. Both films were criticized for historical inaccuracies, but that didn’t stop A Beautiful Mind. And Washington didn’t even rough up a British TV producer.

Then there’s Berry’s role as a downtrodden lower-class mother whose husband has been executed for murder. She has torrid sex with Billy Bob Thornton, who plays the redneck racist prison guard who put her husband to death. Reconciliation is one thing; getting screwed by the oppressor is another.

Perhaps I am too cynical. Washington’s role might expand the acceptable range of Oscar-friendly African-American roles from saints to sinners. Berry’s might make sexuality, even of the interracial variety, an acceptable trait for blacks on screen. What makes a moment historic are the changes that follow from it. We won’t know what differences the 2001 Oscars will make until the Oscar years of 2002 and beyond.