Can aging directors measure up to their own early work?

I have always been a Woody Allen fan and have been proud of it. Something about his films has always registered with me. A viewer can usually identify with his characters on an emotional level. Their relationship problems always seem reality-based and identifiable.

On top of that, Woody Allen is an intellectual and a film scholar. He packs even his simplest films with allusions to philosophers and artists, plus shots done in homage to Fellini, Bergman, Antonioni and other great art film directors. I don’t think any other person has been as successful at turning comedies (and sometimes dramas) that most people can identify with into art.

So it was with great excitement that I watched his newest release this weekend, “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.” And it just wasn’t very good. The members of the ensemble just seemed like ideas for characters, rather than fully fleshed-out, thinking beings. The film’s voiceover narration was more like a parody of the narration in recent films than a useful supply of information.

Some of Allen’s recent films have been among my favorites: “Match Point” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” come to mind, and others have been pretty good. But there have also been some clunkers, and this film fell in that category. My disappointment led me to think about other directors who have continued past their initial fame. Are all directors who continue to work into old age doomed to produce work mostly below the quality of their earlier output?

Other directors I admire came to mind. Martin Scorsese is still capable of making great movies, but his films lack the excitement and necessity of his first two decades. Francis Ford Coppola hasn’t made a great (good?) film since 1979’s “Apocalypse Now.” Even a younger filmmaker like Steven Soderbergh continues to make interesting films but hasn’t been able to blend his popular and artistic instincts since “Traffic” in 2000.

Is it fate that directors will not be quite as good as in their heyday? And is the drop in quality just because of age, or does it have to do with the number of films they have made? Perhaps the more prolific directors have used up their most exciting ideas.
I’m reminded of a line that’s constantly repeated in Allen’s wonderful “Stardust Memories”: “I prefer the early, funny ones.”

Perhaps I’m just afraid of these directors changing. But probably not.