The only artist of any kind who, I feel, consistently put out great works was Louis Ferdinand Celine...and he was a writer....as far as artists of any kind goes, the older they get, the less they tend to matter...yeah everybody loved "Ran", but nobody ever talks about "Madadayo" (which I thought was brilliant), which was the last film of his I saw...and in fact, "Ran" and "Kagemusha" wouldn't have been made if it weren't for a couple of fans of his early work (Coppolla and Lucas)...people tend to forget that Kurosawa tried killing himself on numerous times during the seventies because he was, in the words of many critics, "too old to matter anymore"....both "Dersu Uzala" and "Dodes'Ka Den" were financial and critical failures...Bergman had the same reputation during the seventies, and then made "Fanny And Alexander"...Fellini made "Amacord" and "And The Ship Sails On"...Robert Altman made "The Player" and "Short Cuts" after a decade of being ignored...maybe it's just that we have to catch up with them....