More tears than a Greek funeral, and that’s just among the winners; more exposed flanks than in Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow; and more ill-deserved self-congratulation than a Labour election broadcast. Yep, tonight it’s the Oscars, that annual orgy of bling and boo-hoos.

Even those normally immune to Hollywood hullabaloo find the ceremony holds a macabre fascination. There must be something profoundly satisfying in seeing all those poised personages in their penguin suits being pushed to the outer limits of their acting ability. Smile for the cameras, although your deadly rival, your ex-wife and even your make-up artist have all bagged Oscars — and you, Brad/Tom/Keanu, have yet again won diddly squit.

We are dimly aware that when actors are denied someone else’s lines to parrot, their contribution to human understanding is limited. But it takes an Oscar acceptance speech to remind us just how hilariously, excruciatingly empty these icons of the age really are. Will the winner of the best actress award “accidentally” fall out of a dress already skimpier than her damp hanky? And who can she possibly think of to thank on top of her tai chi instructor and pet shih tzu? Since we once foolishly declared that “the British are coming” we on this side of the Atlantic have tended to satisfy ourselves with the plucky Brit who almost wins best supporting extra, only to be pipped by a one-legged Bavarian. This year’s ceremony will have added tension. While millions ogle on telly the totty sashaying up the red carpet, Hollywood’s players know an important question must be settled: for three decades the man widely regarded as the world ’s finest director has been denied an Oscar. This year the big money is on Martin Scorsese finally winning best director for The Aviator, starring, a little improbably, Leonardo DiCaprio as the batty billionaire Howard Hughes.

In an exclusive eve-of-Oscars interview, however, the director of Taxi Driver and Goodfellas discloses he would regard it as a tarnished award, perhaps more like a gold carriage clock. Asked if the famous statuette would still mean anything to him, he replies bluntly: “No longer. I studied for 33 years. Maybe in the Seventies it would have been nice.”

While every Hollywood A-lister from Robert De Niro to DiCaprio says they owe their careers to Scorsese — Sharon Stone even waived her $4m fee to be directed by him in Casino — the Oscars committee has long been dazzled by lesser talents. Indeed, so disillusioned is Scorsese by Hollywood that his next project is a documentary eulogising the humble old British cinema that he adores.

Talking in his hotel suite in London, he launches a scathing attack on the dumb, dull movies he believes “the new Hollywood” churns out and warns that we are about to witness a second Macarthyism: both the Christian right and the politically correct left are successfully censoring cinema. At last we could have an acceptance speech shorn of “thank yous”; this one should bristle with blame.

But who are the angels in this new war? You don’t need to brandish a Bible to recoil from Hollywood’s enduring fascination with violence — and, sorry to report, the man who popularised cinematic slaughter was Scorsese: without him there would have been no Quentin Tarantino.

“A lot of people said there was too much pointless violence in Goodfellas,” says Scorsese of his sad, sadistic mafia classic, “but to me there is no such thing.”

Scorsese’s slim defence is that he depicts gore not to glorify it but to bury it. To the censors and his critics, “violence is still all right if it is stylised, but not the violence I do”. The violence Scorsese does is real: heads ripped off by bullets, the sickening thud of toe caps into tender tissue, and the nagging suspicion that we are each a little deadened by the spectacle.

Scorsese was among the senior directors summoned to a committee in Washington and told to clean up their act: “We lost,” he says.

Worryingly, the politicians are not just training their sights on violence; they also want Hollywood to reflect their own world view. “Main characters in Hollywood films can’t have abortions,” says Scorsese, referring to Mike Leigh’s British Oscar contender, Vera Drake.

Even Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ ran into huge protests back in 1988 from fundamentalists, despite being more powerful Christian propaganda than you get at your average C of E Sunday service. This time they were not outraged by any violence (which would have been understandable) but by a bit of rumpy pumpy in a dream sequence. “They were furious,” says Scorsese. “But in Italy they were disappointed it didn’t have more sex.”

When not fending off the right he is watching the politically correct left. He is worried that his next film The Departed (again to star DiCaprio), about the Irish underworld in Boston, will be in trouble because of racial insults hurled by characters. “You can hardly say anything about minorities now. It has made it extremely difficult to open your mouth at all in public.”