Small films, small ratings?

LOS ANGELES — No matter who wins tonight, Hollywood can both brag about an unusually daring crop of Academy Awards films and hang its head in embarrassment that hardly any came from the studios that dominate the movie business.

The Oscars, to be telecast beginning at 6 p.m. on ABC (KTVX Ch. 4), are as establishment as it gets in the entertainment world. So it's a triumph of art over commerce that low-budget, fierce dramas such as the cowboy romance "Brokeback Mountain," the ensemble tale "Crash," the Truman Capote story "Capote" and the Edward R. Murrow saga "Good Night, and Good Luck" are the awards darlings this time over the escapist blockbusters that often rule.

"It doesn't have anything to do with the budget of the film. It has to do with the scope and scale of ambition, and the skill that people brought to it to realize that ambition," said James Schamus, a producer of best-picture front-runner "Brokeback Mountain."

"None of these films is small in what they're trying to accomplish," he said.

Those films — along with their fellow best-picture nominee, the assassination thriller "Munich" — had rung up $230 million in domestic grosses as of a week before the Oscars. Last year's best-picture nominees tallied $315 million and together drew the smallest audiences among key Oscar contenders in 20 years.

What the Oscars signal this time is dissatisfaction with the big movies into which the studios pour most of their money. In the eyes of the 5,800 industry professionals who vote on the Oscars, dark character stories were more deserving than the usual studio crowd-pleasers.

Oscar attention always draws more people to see nominated films, and that has been especially helpful for this year's best-picture contenders, most of which have not had the benefit of huge marketing budgets.

"Munich" was the only best-picture nominee to emerge from a big studio. The others were independently produced or came out of studio-aligned arthouse banners such as Focus Features and Sony Pictures Classics.

The beauty of the academy "is it points to things that aren't necessarily something that audiences would generally go to," said George Clooney, a triple nominee as supporting actor in the oil-industry thriller "Syriana" and for directing and co-writing "Good Night, and Good Luck."

Artistic triumph though they may be, the Oscars themselves may suffer for it, at least in TV ratings. Generally, the fewer people who have seen the key nominees, the fewer who tune in to watch the Oscars.