Italy picked up two (or three) Oscars at Sunday night's Academy Awards with Dario Marianelli winning the best score prize for Atonement and the husband-wife pair of Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo winning for Sweeney Todd's art and set direction.
''I feel very lucky indeed,'' said Marianelli, whose Atonement score already picked up a Golden Globe earlier this year.
''I was part of a fantastic group. I'm very grateful to the good friends who supported me and my father and mother who gave me a very great love for music''.
''My legs were shaking when I went up to get the Oscar,'' said Marianelli, who started studying piano at the age of six and at 20 moved to London to deepen his musical knowledge.
Critics say his scores highlight his classical training, which clearly emerged in the haunting music he wrote for Atonement.
''I don't set out to use classical-style themes but that's what comes out of me,'' said Marianelli, whose duet to the sound of a typewriter was hailed as one of the key musical moments of Atonement. The 44-year-old composer from Pisa had already picked up a nomination in 2005 for Pride and Prejudice. He also won high praise for his score to the Brothers Grimm the same year.
All three films were made by British director Joe Wright. Ferretti, meanwhile, joked after he and his wife's second win that ''with four statuettes, we'll have to get the mantelpiece reinforced''.
Ferretti, who won with Lo Schiavo in 2005 for Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, said he was surprised at their second victory.
''I was 100% sure that the Oscar would go to There Will Be Blood,'' he said.
''I was really surprised when I heard my name. I hadn't even prepared a speech''.
''No one can take these Oscars away,'' said Lo Schiavo, adding ''I never thought this was going to be the year''.
Ferretti added: ''We have piled up 16 nominations, but in the end four Oscars have come''.
He thanked Sweeney Todd's director Tim Burton, saying ''it was fantastic to work with him''.
''He's a great artist and being given the chance to work with him is a prize in itself''.
Ferretti, 64, from the northern Italian city of Macerata, made his name working for Italian masters Pier Paolo Pasolini and Federico Fellini and is a long-time collaborator of Martin Scorsese.
In the past, he was nominated for the American director's Age of Innocence in 1994, Kundun in 1998 and Gangs of New York in 2003.
Ferretti's other nominations were for Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen in 1990, Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet in 1991 and Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire in 1995.
Ferretti styled five films for Pasolini and four for Fellini and acknowledges them as his ''two mentors''.
''Pasolini was more poetic; he created a kind of poetic reality,'' Ferretti says.
''From Fellini I learned more about design. He always created his world from his dreams. Everything had to be a little bit big with him - never to scale; always a little bigger. He taught me to think big''.
Italy had another two nominees in this year's Oscar race: Marco Beltrami for the score to 3:10 To Yuma and director Andrea Jublin for the short Il Supplente (The Substitute Teacher) - winner of this year's Aspen Shortsfest best comedy award.
