It was not the showdown scriptwriters had in mind. Leonardo DiCaprio was supposed to fight knife-wielding thugs, not a raging Martin Scorsese.

But when two of Hollywood's powerful men clashed on the set of their latest film, the cast knew what to blame: Rome.

For Scorsese, The Gangs of New York is one of the biggest blockbusters that he has ever directed, an $80 million gamble to show he can make a box-office hit.

For DiCaprio, it is a chance to regain the worldwide acclaim - and lust - that has ebbed since Titanic . It is also a chance for Rome's fabled Cinecittà studios to recapture the magic of its golden age, when stars flocked to its giant sets to make epics such as Ben-Hur and Cleopatra .

Producers overlooked the lure of la dolce vita. Not the film, the reality, for Rome is indeed the sweet life and DiCaprio has been partying hard, too hard. With his Brazilian model girlfriend, Gisele Bundchen, he has been hitting one nightclub after the other with the paparazzi in pursuit.

Shambling bleary-eyed from his Hilton hotel suite into a limousine, he has been chronically late for morning shoots. The schedule slipped and Scorsese flipped.

DiCaprio arrived on set last week to a public roasting in front of cast and extras. The director of Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and Goodfellas let loose a 10-minute tirade that left his leading man speechless. An Italian extra, who plays a rival gang member, said: 'I couldn't understand it all because he was speaking so fast, but he was very angry. We didn't know where to look.'

Since then DiCaprio has been punctual and large set-pieces are scheduled to begin shooting tomorrow. Set in the Bronx slums in the 1850s, the film tells the story of rival Irish, Italian and Chinese immigrants fighting for control during Tammany Hall's political corruption. As violence escalates, DiCaprio, playing a gang leader, Amsterdam, becomes entangled with a thief, played by Cameron Diaz.

DiCaprio's lifestyle echoes the stars of the Fifties and Sixties, who made Hollywood on the Tiber a byword for glamour and hedonism. While Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita immortalised Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg frolicking in the Trevi Fountain, celebrities partied on Via Veneto.

Bosses at Cinecittà hope Gangs will inject cash and confidence into an ailing Italian film industry. Conceived by dictator Benito Mussolini as a vehicle for Fascist propaganda, the 600-acre studios nurtured directors and producers such as Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carlo Ponti and Dino De Laurentiis. Cinecittà was reborn post-war as the cradle of Europe's best talent and hosted classics such as War And Peace, Spartacus, Quo Vadis? and A Farewell To Arms, as well as spaghetti Westerns.

The privatisation of Cine-città and the amending of tax laws have coincided with Hollywood's quest for cheap foreign locations. 'Italian film-making is beginning to pick up. This has come at just the right time,' said Tony Villani, film professor at the American University of Rome.