Part II‘s ambitious structural gambit splits screen time between the boy who would be Don Corleone growing up in Italy to become ruthless immigrant played by Robert De Niro, and Al Pacino’s Michael as he continues his descent into a morally compromised hell. The most major change that both the Epic and Saga make to Coppola’s original is the reordering of scenes, opening with the sequences depicting young Vito Corleone’s ascension to the top of New York’s criminal heap. (It debuted last night, will air again on January 23, and is currently available on HBO Now.) But the Epic still commits the same cardinal sin as the Saga it was designed to overwrite, a gaffe that fundamentally robs both films of the formal grace that’s made them classics. HBO was seeking to right some of the Saga‘s errors with its Godfather Epic, a new rework of Parts I and II that returns the formerly elided sequences to their proper place. The network’s censorship of the grislier sequences, along with the commercial breaks sprinkled liberally across the film’s many hours and the four-night broadcasting schedule, all combined for an experience that many criticized as unsatisfying and incomplete. Having strongarmed approval from a Francis Ford Coppola, who was hard up for cash while making Apocalypse Now, NBC hacked up the film like some jamoke run afoul of the Mafia, adding deleted scenes while also dispensing with some of the more violent footage. In 1977, NBC ran a massive seven-and-a-half-hour edit of The Godfather Part I and Part II called The Godfather Saga.
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