Entertainment

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE CUTTING ROOM

In 1972, Sergio Leone – the Italian filmmaker noted for such spaghetti westerns as “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” – turned down an offer to direct “The Godfather” because he had his own idea for a gangster flick.

It would take a decade of hard work and tens of millions of dollars for Leone to make his dream mob movie, “Once Upon a Time in America.” But what happened next turned out to be a director’s nightmare.

His 227-minute epic about Lower East Side Jewish gangsters from 1921 through the late ’60s – featuring Robert De Niro, James Woods, Tuesday Weld, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, Treat Williams and Jennifer Connelly – debuted at Cannes in 1984, winning praise from critics and audiences.

But the film’s producer, the Ladd Co., had other ideas. Without asking Leone’s opinion, the suits sliced the movie to 139 minutes and changed its structure before releasing it in U.S. theaters.

While Leone’s version audaciously jumped backward and forward in time, the recut edition told the story in (yawn!) chronological order.

Leone was devastated. He died in 1989 at the age of 67, never having made another movie.

The original version of “Once Upon a Time in America” showed at the 1984 New York Film Festival.

It wasn’t seen again publicly in New York until earlier this year, when it had a brief run at the Museum of Modern Art.

Now the American Museum of the Moving Image is bringing it back as part of a Leone retrospective. It screens today and this coming Saturday at 2 p.m.

Our advice: Get there early. When the film screened at MoMA, there was a near mob scene as movie lovers battled to get in.

The AMMI is at 35th Avenue and 36th Street in Astoria, Queens. Information: (718) 784-0077.

(-sbull-) The plot of the Italian drama “The Bicycle Thief” (1949) could not be simpler: the theft of a bike a man depends on for his livelihood, and the man’s and his young son’s heartbreaking attempt to recover it.

No car chases. No special effects. No bloodshed. Just fine storytelling from one of the cinema’s masters, Vittorio De Sica. (Hollywood, take note.)

The neo-realist classic gets a one-week revival, starting Wednesday at Anthology Film Archives, Second Avenue and Second Street in the East Village. Information: (212) 505-5100.

(-sbull-) Fernanda Montenegro is one of Brazil’s leading actors, but most moviegoers in the U.S. never heard of her until she won an Oscar nomination last year for the Walter Salles tear-jerker “Central Station.”

Now, thanks to the Film Society of Lincoln Center, we have a chance to see Montenegro in that film and three others – “The Deceased” (1965), “They Don’t Wear Black Tie” (1981) and “Everything’s All Right” (1977).

The four features unspool Wednesday and Thursday at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater. Information: (212) 875-5600.

(-sbull-) Can you imagine a Roberto Benigni movie without his voice? That’s what you’ll get if you go to the new English-dubbed version of “Life Is Beautiful.”

Seems the folks at Miramax figured they might be able to wring a few more bucks out of the film, which has already grossed $57 million, if they put out an English-language edition. So they had the movie dubbed, with someone named Jonathan Nichols doing Benigni. Forget it!

(-sbull-) Video alert: Two recent Cine File faves, “Go” and “The Dreamlife of Angels,” arrive in stores this week.

V.A. Musetto is film editor of The Post. He can be e-mailed at vam@nypost.com