New Delhi, June 14 -- LOS ANGELES - There is a version of the Oscar ceremony that exists purely as an industry self-congratulation exercise, and most filmgoers sense it even as they watch. Best Picture winners that feel like committee decisions. Films that announce their own importance. Cinema that has been rewarded rather than remembered.

And then there are the other ones.

The ten films below have each won the Academy Award for Best Picture, but what distinguishes them from the dozens of winners who fade from memory is something more specific: they get harder to read the second time. A first viewing gets you the story. A second gets you the architecture beneath it - the argument the film is actually making, which is rarely the one adve...