Simon Beaufoy said it all when he stepped up to address the world's press backstage at the Oscars on Sunday night, moments after winning the adapted screenplay prize for Slumdog Millionaire. "The financial markets are crashing around the world and a film comes out which is ostensibly about being a millionaire," Beaufoy said. "Actually … it's a film that says there are more important things than money: love, faith, and family. And that struck a chord with people, I think; right now, in an era where we suddenly turn around and go, 'Wait a minute, this money thing – it's been shown to be a real false idol.' And so the timing of when this film came out had a tremendous impact."

For the first time in many years, seasoned awards watchers agree that a movie came along that did things its own way. Whereas previous best picture winners such as No Country for Old Men and The Departed advanced towards the ultimate prize through a carefully orchestrated campaign that took in the requisite staging posts along the way – the Academy and Guild screenings, onstage Q&As and publicity tours, to name a few – Slumdog Millionaire rode to victory on the strength of its irrepressible spirit.

That's not to say the remarkable collaboration between Film4, Celador Films, Pathé and Fox Searchlight (which came aboard after the moribund Warner Independent Pictures passed the movie on) didn't earn its stripes on the awards circuit: the long list of wins from US critics groups and the directors', writers', actors' and producers' guilds demonstrates its abundant qualifications. The point is that Slumdog Millionaire bore the hallmark of a champion from the moment it arrived at the Toronto international film festival last autumn, just days after its rapturous world premiere screening at the smaller Telluride film festival in Colorado.

"There's an infectiousness to Slumdog Millionaire that reminds me of [1999 Oscar winner] Shakespeare in Love," said Tony Angellotti, Hollywood's godfather of awards-season campaign strategy, who advised the studios this year on drives for WALL-E and Frost/Nixon. "Gwyneth [Paltrow] looked like she was having the time of her life and it was a pleasure watching it all unfold. It was one of those movies that moved through the awards season on a tide of goodwill and the same thing's happened this year with Danny Boyle and his gang."

"Slumdog didn't need to tick off the boxes by doing the same screenings as all the other perceived contenders," said another veteran awards consultant, who preferred to remain anonymous. "If everyone's twisting, is it really hip? Everyone's doing these things and they no longer catch the press's attention like they used to. What I do believe has a lot of impact is the way a film comes out of a festival, such as Slumdog did out of Toronto, just as American Beauty, Ray and Juno did years before it. Or the way No Country for Old Men or Pulp Fiction came out of Cannes. These movies had a momentum and kept going.

"The minute Slumdog screened it was a slam-dunk crowdpleaser with the necessary gravity as a backdrop to elevate it to a reasonably serious status," the expert continued. "Juno was the same in that it had the subject of teen pregnancy to elevate a relatively toothless film into something more meaningful.

"The film screened at Toronto and everybody came out saying it was a terrific film. You had to fuck that one up. Slumdog didn't have actors who people knew and they still won the Screen Actors Guild's top award. They won the Editors Guild award, but it isn't half the editing job of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. To me that says everything you need to know," he concluded.

Under the auspices of the lauded British executive Peter Rice, Fox Searchlight capitalised on the iconic face of Freida Pinto and the goofy mug of Dev Patel and moulded them into a kind of currency of joy. Their faces appeared on billboards and TV spots and provided a fresh-faced tonic to the economic gloom that was steadily suffocating the US and the rest of the world.

Slumdog Millionaire, which will cross $100m (£68.8m) at the US box office any day now, was also the only one of the five eventual best picture nominees that had a shamelessly happy ending. It shone in contrast to the rival tales of poignant, doomed love (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), the trial of a Nazi war criminal (The Reader), a stern joust involving a former president whose legacy still haunts the US (Frost/Nixon), and the true story of the assassination of a gay icon (Milk), whose message of equality was patently ignored by California voters only as recently as November.

Everywhere the Slumdog bandwagon went it looked like everybody involved was having such a good time. Pinto was always laughing and Boyle carried on in his typically irrepressible manner. "Their joyfulness was contagious and that's great to be around in these miserable times," an awards season consultant said. In the end Danny Boyle and his UK-Mumbai barmy army breezed it.

It was a triumphant night for the Brits at the Academy Awards, with Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire bagging eight gongs, while Kate Winslet went home with the award for best actress. Jason Solomons and Xan Brooks discussed the action through the small hours