Quentin Tarantino, 60, has said that The Movie Critic will be his last directing effort because he doesn’t want to succumb to a gradual decline period, which tends to happen, he believes, when directors get into their 60s. Yes, Alfred Hitchcock went into a slow decline after The Birds (Marnie is abundant proof of that) and Stanley Kubrick had arguably begun to lose his edge (certainly compared to the filmmaker he was in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s) when he made Eyes Wide Shut. But otherwise there are several holes in QT’s analysis.
Clint Eastwood was still cooking with good gas when he made 2008’s Gran Torino at age 77 or thereabouts. John Huston was the same age (77 or thereabouts) when he hit a grand slam with Prizzi’s Honor (’85). There’s no indication that 80-year-old Martin Scorsese is currently off his game, or that he was slippin’ when he made The Irishman (’19). In his early 80s Sidney Lumet delivered a career-crowning one-two punch with Find Me Guilty (’06) and Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (’07). Woody Allen‘s last three exceptional films — Match Point (’05), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (’08) and Midnight in Paris (’11) — were made when he was 69, 72 and 75.
Other exceptions are…?