First of all, hello to everyone, i am a huge fan of the GF trilogy..I have a question about rumoured rough cut that allegedly was six hours long, and there was allot more Robert De Niro as Vito scenes..this from The Godfather museum blog:

Before work began on Part II, Coppola was again struck with the "extended edition" idea and in 1973, announced to the press that Part II would not be a standalone film. Instead, it was to be edited together with Part I to form one long, continuous theatrical movie to be titled The Godfather Saga. "The movie isn't a sequel in the Hollywood sense of the word. They're two distinct pieces that are formed together to make one story. They should be told together. I want the [Saga] to be an event... like, you have to call out sick and take the day off because you know you're going to be sitting in the theater for 8 hours!"

When Paramount got word of this, they quickly reminded Coppola that the complete artistic freedom granted to him for Part II did not extend to any repackaging of Part I. Part II was to be a "Hollywood sequel", albeit an unconventional one.

When the rough cut of Part II was assembled, Coppola had a movie that was 6 hours long. It was basically two different films separated by an intermission- the first three hours detailing the rise of Vito Corleone and the last three hours chronicling the fall of Michael Corleone. At this point, the idea of combining the two stories as a flashback-driven narrative had not been thought of.

Paramount's idea was to make two different films, a prequel and a sequel, to be released a year apart from each other. Coppola hated the idea. His partner at American Zoetrope, George Lucas, was blunt: "Francis, you have two different movies. Throw one of them away, you'll never make them work together." But Coppola played around with the flashback idea until he had a "dynamite" structure that told both stories in tandem. This first "parallel narrative" cut ran 4 hours and 45 minutes. This 285 minute version was cut down to 200 minutes for theaters (210 minutes for theaters that snuck in an intermission). This left approximately 2 hours and 25 minutes* sitting on the cutting room floor.

(*About half of this 185 minutes of excised footage was made up of more of Vito's earlier exploits, the rest mainly taking place after Michael Corleone kills his brother Fredo. Many fans would be surprised to know that after Michael kills Fredo, the movie goes on for another hour and a half. Some of these plot points (Michael getting involved in Washington politics, later ending up running what's left of Hyman Roth's Miami business) would be touched upon by Mark Winegardner in his atrociously-written and poorly conceived Godfather Returns and Godfather's Revenge books. The film finally ends in 1972, with Michael Corleone back in his Long Island estate, sitting in a chair, smoking and contemplating his life of crime. After this sequence was shortened and the preceding hour cut, this scene was re-shot with Michael in slightly-less aged makeup and the time frame was bumped up to 1968.)

The Young Vito sequence likewise lost about an hour and a half. In the finished film, his story stops in 1925 as he's leaving Sicily. But much more took place when he returned to America. There are scenes with Vito establishing his budding empire, recruiting a young Luca Brasi, teaching a young Sonny the ins and outs of gangster life, and a long sequence in the 30's where the Corleone family is busy fighting off a war with a rival Mafia clan (even Al Capone sends some guys after Vito!)

De Niro gained an additional 40 pounds for these later sequences. Some stills from these shots were released as publicity photos. (The cover of The Godfather Companion contains the only known studio still from the 30's sequence; here, De Niro's bulk is much more apparent and his resemblance to Marlon Brando's Don is startling.)



so, can anyone confirm, is this all truth or false?

Not sure about an official rough cut but yeah a lot of interesting footage was cut. One in particular was Mike personally killing Fabrizio. There is no released footage but there s a screenshot of mike holding a shotgun and shooting him

I'm in the same boat as JC--never heard of an "official" rough cut. But, yes, many hours of additional scenes were filmed and discarded--including, for example, Paulie and two heavies beating up the scum who ruined Bonasera's daughter; and the scene JC referred to. I strongly urge you to get Harlan Lebo's "The Godfather Legacy," which many of us here regard as the GF Trilogy Bible. The book has photos of that scene where Michael kills Fab. Also has a reproduction of the FBI family organization chart seen in the Senate hearing.

BTW: Have you ever seen the "Saga" version and/or the "extras" disc in the DVD boxed set? Both contain the deleted scenes from GF and II.

I saw deleted scenes as extras..i am aware that there are multiple mini series versions, usualy in chronological order, that also have added deleted scenes in, i even know abou the whole Frabrizio thing, that there was a lost scene that was made during filming GF1, and scene for GFII that was saved, but also deleted from final version of the movie..i was talking specificaly abotu those scenes that never saw the light of day, do they even exist, how much of Young Vito material in particular is lost, beacuse, honestly, i am satisfied wuth Michael storyline ending with killing Fredo and sitting alone,perfect ending, but i woould like to see that extra De Niro stuf, if it even exists..then again, even if it ever existed, footage is probably lost..i guess we should appreciate what we have

Well, you said it all in your post. There must have been thousands--hundreds of thousands--of feet of film that was never used; and yes, it is probably lost or has been destroyed. I bet everyone on this board would love to see every inch of it.

Here's a detail about one of the deleted scenes included on the "extras" disc of the DVD boxed set:

When Michael is giving his blessing to Francesa and Gardner Shaw's marriage, the scene ends with Michael telling Tom: "Make sure her dowry is big--these people think Italian brides go barefoot." But, the "Saga" version seen often on cable has about 8 seconds after that: Michael turns to a hulking young man in a plaid sport coat and says, "How's the football, Santino? He replies, "Fine, Uncle Michael." That's Sonny's (probably oldest) son. Frank (who gave Vito the get-well card when he returned from the hospital) is probably Santino's younger brother.

First I heard of it. There are many hours of all three that were put on the cutting floor.
Turnbull, that scene with Paulie and two heavies was put in the game, your character also is the one that does the beating, with Paulie at the end knocking the kid out with the shovel and landing in the grave.
Another scene is showing where Luca lives and hurting someone that is behind on their payments, again your character does the fighting.