Vintage Sand

"7 Women". "Rio Lobo". "The Other Side of the Wind". "Family Plot". "Buddy Buddy". "Pocketful of Miracles". "A Countess from Hong Kong". Have you even heard of these films, let alone seen them? Yet they stand as the final works, respectively, of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Frank Capra and Charlie Chaplin. In Episode 31 of the podcast, Team Vintage Sand explores the question of why so many, if not most, of our greatest directors conclude their careers with middling, occasionally atrocious, and almost universally forgettable films. But do not despair, dear listener; we also travel to France, Sweden, Japan and back home, and across the years from the mid-1930’s to the early years of this century, to give our favorite examples of great directors who ended their careers on a high note. These latter fall into two distinct categories: the majority, where directors were unaware that their most recent effort would serve as their final statement, and those rare cases where t