Directors and their filmographies

Why is it that some directors are extremely prolific whilst others may make only a handful of films? An article in the latest Sight and Sound discusses this very topic. This got me thinking. At one extreme we have some directors who only made one full-length film – Charles Laughton (The Night of the Hunter), Jean Vigo (L’Atalante) –  whilst at the other extreme there are directors like Alfred Hitchcock who directed 52 films, and Woody Allen who has been making a film every year for over 40 years. And let’s not forget Rainer Werner Fassbinder who directed over 40 films before dying at the age of 37.  There are many reasons for this wide variety which the article articulates well. What I would like to add is this – the danger with a director being prolific is that there is a tendency for their work to be taken for granted and to  lapse into repetition – Woody Allen, I rest my case.  There was a time when the next Woody Allen film would be one of the highlights of my year, but now it’s a case of “here’s another Woody Allen film”.  Where-as with directors who have small filmographies one naturally feels that more time and thought has gone into the film-making process (Tarkovsky and Kubrick being prime examples of this), and therefore they deserve more attention from the viewer.  This is not to denigrate the films of a Hitchcock or a Fassbinder, many of which may be masterpieces, but this is simply a product of human nature.