I love deleted movie scenes. You often get insights into a film from seeing what was taken out. Sometimes the deletion is obvious: the scene doesn’t work or it redundant. Other times, though, I feel like it may have been dropped just to make the film shorter. I felt that way watching this scene:
Coppola does foreshadowing in a number of scenes in the film, including this one. You can see laid bare Michael’s desire for revenge, a revenge he gets at the end. You also see how happy the Don is to have him back.
There are key transition points for Michael in the film: when he shows up at the hospital to protect his father and when he proposes to kill McCluskey and Solozzo. I feel this deleted scene is one of those.
Obviously Coppola is a great director and he knows how to cut a film. I would have liked to see this one kept in, though.
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