ADDED SCENES DETRACT FROM WONDER OF ORIGINAL 'PARADISO'.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

UNDOUBTEDLY, those who love Giuseppe Tornatore's unabashedly sentimental valentine to the movies, ``Cinema Paradiso,'' will be excited that a new version of the 1989 Oscar winner is finally arriving in theaters with 51 minutes of additional footage.

However the new scenes not only prove the old adage that less is more, they also substantially alter the tone and the focus of the movie. It's changed into something that is often at odds with the reasons audiences embraced it in the first place.

Tornatore's movie can easily be seen as the granddaddy of the Miramax foreign movie, containing all the elements that Harvey Weinstein has parlayed into Oscar gold in the past decade. There's an impossibly precocious urchin living in an improbably idyllic European village that's populated by endearingly eccentric locals who behave in ways that seem more mushily mythic than anything you might find in the real world.

``Cinema Paradiso'' could get away with that, justifying these things on the grounds that its flashback story is seen through the gauze of nostalgia. When successful Italian filmmaker Salvatore (Jacques Perrin) receives word his childhood father figure Alfredo (Philippe Noiret) had died, the bittersweet memories of his youth come flooding back. Movies dominate: Alfredo ran the projector at the Cinema Paradiso, a place where young Salvatore - and the rest of the town - took refuge in postwar Italy.

The original film focused on the friendship between the boy (and, later, the adolescent) and the old man, who dispensed advice culled from lines of the great old movies that the Paradiso played. The rites of passage could often be predictable, but Tornatore infused his movie with enough lovely moments and graceful simplicity to render any logical objections irrelevant. In the end, ``Paradiso'' worked as a beautiful eulogy to a friendship, community and cinema itself.

The new version is another thing entirely. All the new scenes take place after the movie's most melodramatic scene and focus almost entirely on Salvatore's romance with Elena. What was left unsaid is now explained, and a relationship that was consigned to the past is now renewed. (And a PG rating is bumped to an R for a couple of discreet love scenes.)

The added footage also cast a new light on Alfredo's hardened fatalism, and there's a revelation about the old projectionist that some romantics might see as a monstrous betrayal.

Those who love ``Cinema Paradiso'' will find the new scenes interesting, but few will find the movie improved. The added hour now shifts entirely too much importance to Elena, lessening the film's two key relationships - Salvatore's love for Alfredo and his passion for the movies - in the process. Don't be surprised if, upon viewing it, your memories of the film's dreaminess erode into something less warmly palatable.

CINEMA PARADISO (NEW VERSION) - Three stars

(Rated R: some sexuality)

Starring: Philippe Noiret, Jacques Perrin, Salvatore Cascio, Marco Leonardi.

Director: Giuseppe Tornatore.

Running time :2 hr. 53 min.

Playing: Laemmle's Royal Theater in Santa Monica. Opening in additional theaters June 21.

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Photo:

Salvatore Cascio, left, finds sanctuary in Philippe Noiret's projection room in the re-released ``Cinema Paradiso.''