There were many reasons why Louis B. Mayer, the head of MGM and the most powerful man in Hollywood in 1926, wanted to create a single organization unifying the industry’s disparate branches – technicians, artists, performers, and producers. For starters, he wanted to prevent actors and artists, some of them under contract to MGM, from striking, as the technicians had less than a decade earlier.

But just as importantly, Hollywood was suffering from an identity crisis: Magazines and newspapers were awash with half-concocted stories about glamorous stars wallowing in debauchery and sin. Tinseltown needed to improve its image as Gomorrah on the Pacific. What better way than to honor the films that put the industry’s best face forward?

At the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science’s inaugural banquet, held in May 1927, Douglas Fairbanks warned of the film industry being “under a great and alarming cloud of public censure and contempt,” and saw the necessity of action that would “establish the industry in the public mind as a legitimate institution, and its people as reputable individuals.” Perusing the works in Film Forum’s “Oscar’s First Year: 1927-28” series, which features winners of the first Academy Awards, suggests Hollywood circa 1928 wasn’t all that different from today.

The first Oscar winners, announced February 16, 1929, were utterly reputable. The award for Best Picture, then known as Best Production, went to William Wellmann’s “Wings” (screening February 26 and 27), a heroic romance about American World War I pilots. Full of patriotism and ennobling chestnuts about the can-do gumption of small-town boys turned soldiers, it’s a perfect recipe for future Best Picture winners: An inoffensive story and a lengthy running time, served with a dash of dodgy history and dollops of technical achievement.

Director Wellmann does bring a sober grandeur to his film’s aerial sequences. Perhaps the reason “Wings” hasn’t maintained its reputation over the years is because these terrific flying scenes were soon overshadowed by the ones in “Hell’s Angels” – that other aerial combat film, which has a starring role in the first act of “The Aviator,” this year’s potential Best Picture winner.

Another Best Picture award, for Artistic Quality of Production (the only time it was awarded), was given to German director F.W. Murnau’s “Sunrise” (February 27 & 28).Time has been kinder to Murnau’s film. Though a financial disappointment at the time of its release, it is now regarded as one of the greatest – if not the greatest – silent films ever made.

“Sunrise” tells the story of a plain husband and wife from a small village, whose marriage is thrown into turmoil when he has an affair with a vampish city woman. Murnau follows the married couple on their trek to the big city where, confronted by the wonder and chaos of the modern world, they’re drawn back together. It’s the kind of film that pits the simple wisdom of rural folk against the murderous wanton of city dwellers, complete with Biblical downpours and pseudo-religious imagery. (Who says Hollywood doesn’t stick up for traditional values?)

But it’s the crazed technical virtuosity of Murnau’s vision that makes “Sunrise” a masterpiece. His elaborate tracking shots and massive sets, the way both the cityscape and the natural world heave and throb with his protagonists’ emotions – none of this seems dated. Indeed, it seems entirely fresh. “Sunrise” is still one of the greatest directorial achievements in film. But, true to form, while “Sunrise” did win for Best Actress and Best Cinematography, the Academy didn’t even nominate Murnau for Best Director.

That award went to Frank Borzage, for “Seventh Heaven” (February 25 & 26), a luminous hit featuring Charles Farrell as a charming Parisian sewer worker romancing saintly urchin Janet Gaynor. Farrell, Gaynor, and Borzage quickly teamed up again for the similarly swooning “Street Angel” (March 1), which this time featured her as a streetwalker with a heart of gold.

Though their settings are gritty, these films present idealized love stories with remarkably pure characters. Both “Heaven” and “Angel” exemplify Borzage’s unabashed romanticism, as well as his ability to create haunting moments of intimacy without losing the epic sweep of his stories. They also display his penchant for molding actresses into astonishing romantic figures: Gaynor was awarded Best Actress that year for her work in both of Borzage’s films, as well as “Sunrise.”

Gaynor may well have been, for a moment, the face Hollywood wanted the world most to see. A 22-year-old Quaker living at home with her mother, this relative newcomer was a far cry from the hedonistic vamps Tinseltown was notorious for producing. She even beat out one of them for the award: Gloria Swanson was nominated for “Sadie Thompson.”

But the most important award handed out that first Oscar year turned out to be the special one, for technical achievement, given to “The Jazz Singer” (screening March 3). The first sound film, it had already transformed the industry. The Best Title-Writing award, awarded that year to Joseph Farnham for numerous films, including “The Unknown,” (March 2) would never be given again.

But there was nothing revolutionary about “The Jazz Singer’s” plot: The story of a young Jewish man (Al Jolson) torn between his showbiz dreams and his religious family, it ends in classic Hollywood fashion, with the hero performing “Kol Nidre” on Yom Kippur in his cantor father’s absence, on the eve of Broadway stardom. Hollywood wanted a world where piety and fame could exist happily side-by-side. It still does.

Until March 3 (209 W. Houston Street, between Sixth Avenue & Varick, 212-727-8110).