Pitt made his triumphant return to the spotlight to introduce the teaser package for Moonlight, a contender for one of the night's most coveted awards.

His appearance on stage was met with wild cheers and adulation from the assembly of Hollywood heavyweights in the crowd, suggesting Hollywood is on Team Brad in the acrimonious split which has played out through tabloid leaks and gossip magazines.

But while  Pitt's appearance was an interesting point in the awards the celebrations all went to La La Land which has emerged as the hottest Oscar contender this year, with wins at the International AACTA Awards and the New York Film Critics Circle awards.

At the Golden Globes it securing awards for best film, actor, actress, director and screenplay along with both the music awards on the night.

The night's other top honour – best dramatic film – went to Moonlight.

Despite the perception they happen frequently, such clean sweeps are rare, with La La Land setting a record for the most Globes ever won by a single film in one year.

The film's leads Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone won for best actor and actress in a movie comedy/musical, director and screenwriter Damien Chazelle in both of those categories, beating out Australia's Mel Gibson for Hackshaw Ridge in the process.

Australia's two other nominees – Nicole Kidman and Joel Edgerton –  also went home empty-handed.

We were barely 60 seconds into the telecast the 89th annual Golden Globes when the telecast had its first technical glitch – a teleprompter failure, which forced host Jimmy Fallon to pad off-script – and its first Donald Trump joke.

The awards were, Fallon noted, "one of the few places left where America still honours the popular vote."

That, and another joke, which compared incoming US president Donald Trump to Game of Thrones despotic, juvenile King Joffrey, got slightly muted cheers from the audience.

Fallon opened the night with a pre-recorded all-star, all-singing, all-dancing production number which revealed, among other things, that a good deal of the town's A-list talent are tone deaf. (Notable exception: Justin Timberlake.)

But the opening monologue was safe, seeming particularly so in the wake of past hosts such as Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, who wasted no time ripping into the industry's sacred cows seated in the star-studded Beverly Hilton ballroom.

The stark difference in complexion between the Golden Globes and the Oscars, which were criticised last year for their "whiteness" with a damaging #OscarsSoWhite campaign, was emphasised with wins for the television series Atlanta and actors Viola Davis, Donald Glover and Tracee Ellis Ross.

"This is for all of the women, for women of colour, and colourful people, whose ideas, stories and thoughts are not always considered valid or important," Ross, the daughter of legendary singer Diana Ross, said in her acceptance speech. She also thanked her mother.

Among the night's biggest surprises was Hugh Laurie's win in the supporting actor category for The Night Manager, beating out two of the most critically lauded performances of the year: John Lithgow in The Crown and John Travolta in The People vs. O.J. Simpson.

Laurie did, however, score one of the sharpest lines in the night, foreshadowing it could be the last Globes ever. "It has the words Hollywood, foreign and press in the title," he said, referring to Donald Trump's distaste for all three.

"To some Republicans even the word association is sketchy," Laurie added.

Least surprising was The Crown, which won best television drama and best actress for Claire Foy's portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II.

Foy dedicated to the award to the Queen, saying: "She has been the centre of the world for the past 63 years and I think the world could do with a few more women at the centre of it."

Other highlights included a special remembrance of mother and daughter Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, who died a day after each other in late December, and a speech from winner Tom Hiddleston in which he highlighted the work done by organisations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres who are "fixing the world where it is broken".

The Golden Globes are a major fixture in film's so-called "awards season", which runs generally between November and the following February and includes key ceremonies such as the Writers, Producers, Screen Actors and Directors Guilds awards, the British BAFTAs and concludes with the Academy Awards in late February.

The International AACTA Awards, given out by the Australian film and television academy, are timed deliberately to fall into awards season, with La La Land, Casey Affleck (for Manchester By The Sea) and Emma Stone (for La La Land) taking out the key film, actor and actress awards last week.

The season began back in November with the Gotham Independent Film Awards, which crowned Moonlight as its best film. That sentiment was echoed by the Los Angeles Film Critics awards, while their New York counterparts gave best film to La La Land, the film which now seems to have the strongest Oscar momentum.

Though much stock is put in the Golden Globes as a predictor of Oscar success, in truth they are the most capricious of the awards during awards season; voted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), they are the most unpredictable and the most shaped by either media noise or personal sentiment.

CNN media analyst Brian Lowry summed up the seeming random nature of this (and every) year's Globes winners list with this pointed tweet: "Clearly [the] HFPA dispensed with secret ballots and went with the ever-popular monkey throwing darts."

In fact the most reliable predictor of Oscar winners is the Producer's Guild of America, which has matched best picture winners with the Oscar-voting Academy for eight of the last nine years, and 19 out of the last 27 years.

The almost decade-long matching streak was interrupted last year when the two organisations split on the winner of best picture: the producers voted for The Big Short, the academy voted for Spotlight.

Either way it makes the Producers Guild Awards, slated for January 28 in Los Angeles, a must-watch for film fans hoping to make the most accurate prediction of who will walk away wrapped in Oscar glory.

The Golden Globes were first handed out in 1994, though television categories were not added until 1955. (That year there were two winners of the first "television achievement" Golden Globes, performer Desi Arnaz and talk show host Dinah Shore.)

The lifetime achievement Cecil B. DeMille Award was first given out in 1952 and is named for its first recipient, the legendary director Cecil B. DeMille; past recipients include Judy Garland, Alfred Hitchcock, Lucille Ball, Sophia Loren and Steven Spielberg.

This year's recipient was the actress Meryl Streep who, with eight awards including the DeMille award, from 28 nominations, remains the most awarded performer in Golden Globes history. In second place is Jack Nicholson with six wins from 17 nominations.

"I have lost my voice screaming in lamentation," she whispered, referring to the sudden deaths of Reynolds and Fisher, referring later to her "dear departed friend, the late Princess Leia". (Streep starred in the film adaptation of Fisher's book, Postcards From the Edge.)

The 67-year-old acting legend also used her speech to criticise Donald Trump's public mockery of a disabled reporter, saying it broke her heart because of the permission it gives others to humiliate.

"Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence, when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose," she said.

Streep also spoke out about press freedom, urging people to support the Committee to Protect Journalists. "We're going to need them going forward and they will need us, to safeguard the truth," she said.

The star of such films as Silkwood, Kramer vs. Kramer and Sophie's Choice, Streep acknowledged the variety of birthplaces and circumstances of the night's key nominees.

"Hollywood is full of foreigners and if you kick 'em out you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which is not arts," she said.

FULL LIST OF WINNERS

Movie Categories

Best Picture, Drama: Moonlight 

Best Actor, Drama: Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea)

Best Actress, Drama: Isabelle Huppert (Elle)

Best Picture, Comedy/Musical: La La Land

Best Actor, Comedy/Musical: Ryan Gosling (La La Land)

Best Actress, Comedy/Musical: Emma Stone (La La Land)

Best Supporting Actor: Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Nocturnal Animals)

Best Supporting Actress: Viola Davis (Fences)

Best Director: Damien Chazelle (La La Land)

Best Foreign Language Film: Elle (France)

Best Animated Film: Zootopia

Best Screenplay: Damien Chazelle (La La Land)

Original Score, Motion Picture: La La Land

Best Original Song, Motion Picture: City of Stars (La La Land)

Television Categories

Best Comedy/Musical: Atlanta (FX)

Best Drama: The Crown (Netflix)

Best Television Limited Series or TV Movie: The People vs. OJ Simpson (FX)

Best Actor, Drama: Billy Bob Thornton (Goliath)

Best Actress, Drama: Claire Foy (The Crown)

Best Actor, Comedy: Donald Glover (Atlanta)

Best Actress, Comedy/Musical: Tracee Ellis Ross (Black-ish)

Best Actor, Limited Series or TV Movie: Tom Hiddleston (The Night Manager)

Best Actress, Limited Series or TV Movie: Sarah Paulson (The People vs. O.J. Simpson)

Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Limited Series, or TV Movie: Hugh Laurie (The Night Manager)

Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Limited Series, or TV Movie: Olivia Colman (The Night Manager)

With Michael Idato, Nathanael Cooper and Ebony Bowden