When Mike Leigh was asked whether he liked the work of his fellow director Woody Allen, he responded in a way that many of us have been secretly thinking too: “Radio Days would be on my desert island with me, but if you wanted to subject me to excruciating torture, you’d send me there with a copy of Match Point. I wouldn’t survive 24 hours.”

Match Point (2005) may have earned Allen his 21st Oscar nomination – for Best Original Screenplay – but this did not hide the fact that his once-great works have given way to a series of below-par films.

This weekend Vicky Cristina Bar-celona, the 38th film of Allen’s 42-year career, has its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, in an out-of-competition slot. The story of two American students on holiday in Spain, it stars three of Hollywood’s hottest current stars: the recent Oscar winner Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and, for a third time, Scarlett Johansson.

Yet when I ask him how he feels about the film now that it is heading to Cannes, the response is distinctly automatic pilot. “I never think about a film once it’s finished and I’m almost finished filming another one. I never give it a second thought. It was finished last summer and now it’s this summer.”

Next Friday his previous work, Cassandra’s Dream, is released in Britain. It’s his third movie in a row to be set in London, after Match Point and Scoop.

Now 72, Allen is well past retirement age but has no intention of stopping. “I would consider it,” he says, “but it’s not something imminent.” The trouble is, though, does anyone care any more? As a friend of mine said to me, “These days being a fan of Woody Allen is like supporting England: you’re nostalgic for the glory days, you go in with hope and you end up being disappointed.”

When we meet, the Brooklyn-born Allen is bullish – well, as much as can be expected for one so pensive, paranoid and hard of hearing. He is like an even more wizened version of his screen persona, with those iconic thick-rimmed glasses, that wisp of brown hair and the deep worry lines in his forehead.

How does he respond to the fact that critics no longer support him? “I haven’t read a word regarding myself or my films in over 30 years,” he replies. “I have no idea how they are regarded. Even from a financial point of view if one does well I’d never know as the money flows to my accountants – and I have no contact with them.”

He’s his own harshest critic. Unlike his peers from the 1970s such as Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman and Steven Spielberg, Allen feels he has failed to inspire film-makers. “I don’t think you would get one out of a hundred who would say, ‘Woody Allen has been a real influence on me’. I don’t think you’d get one.”

He says that, The Purple Rose of Cairoand Husband and Wivesaside, there are very few of his films he really likes. What about the quintessential Allen film Annie Hall, which won him two Oscars, including one for Best Director? “I don’t dislike it,” he says. “I had a wonderful time making it, but it’s not one of the films I remember.”

He says he’s proud of Cassandra’s Dream, though it’s hard to see why. Starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell as two working-class brothers (terrible accents included) asked by their uncle to kill his business partner, it’s a hit-and-miss thriller that exemplifies a typical recent Allen trait – reworking the same themes (in this case murder and guilt) from a much better Allen film (Crimes and Misdemeanours).

If anything sums up the stultifying experience of filming it, it’s McGregor’s recollection of an incident during the shoot when Allen fell asleep on set during a lighting change. “He was leaning on his hand, and completely out for the count. What we should have done was shot the scene.”

When did we fall out of love with Woody? You could easily point to his personal life and the scandalous revelation of his relationship with Soon-Yi, the adopted daughter of his former lover Mia Farrow (with whom he made 13 movies). At the time, Allen – who has one biological son, Satchel, with Farrow, as well as two adopted children – was vilified in the press.

Farrow accused him of abusing one of their children, for which no evidence was found. Allen maintains he just kept his head down, although Barbara Kop-ple’s candid documentary Wild Man Blues (1997), which followed Allen on a jazz tour, could be seen as a public-relations exercise aimed at rebuilding his shattered image.

A pity the same could not be done for his reputation as a film-maker. Two of his recent films – Hollywood Ending and Scoop – did not even reach cinemas in the UK. Others, such as The Curse of the Jade Scorpionand Anything Else, received almost apologetic releases.

Once upon a time the unveiling of a new Allen film was a national event; now it barely causes a ripple. Again, he doesn’t seem to care. “I never have any idea what happens to my films after I put them out. I don’t know where they are released, what theatres they are in. Distribution of my movies falls into the category of business and I don’t have the slightest interest in their fate.”

If it sounds arrogant, it simply reinforces the notion that Allen lives in a bubble. He is yet to make a film about what he is now: a neurotic Jewish New Yorker in his seventies. His characters no longer seem in touch with his own life experiences.

His acting now is little more than shameless mugging to the camera – witness his magician in Scoop or his 9/11 obsessive in Anything Else. And it doesn’t help that this self-con-fessed “creature of habit” churns out one film a year, which may give purpose to his life but is hardly conducive to quality control.

Does he feel that he is a better film-maker now than in the 1970s and 1980s? “I don’t see any reason why I should be any better now,” Allen says. “I think I’m the same. This doesn’t mean that if I have a very good idea for a movie it won’t be better than an earlier movie, but the converse is true.”

After ten years of marriage to Soon-Yi – they have two daughters, Bechet and Manzie – Allen is all about routine. “I like to do the same thing every day,” he says. “I get up, get on the treadmill, take the kids to school, work, practise my clarinet and eat at the same restaurants.”

Happiest at home when he’s writing, it’s no coincidence that his best reviews in years were not for a film but for last year’s Mere Anarchy, his fourth collection of short stories and his first since 1980. “The writer’s life is a very good life,” he says.

Currently shooting in New York for the first time since Melinda and Melinda (2004), Allen is co-starring with Larry David from Curb Your Enthusiasm who appeared briefly in both Radio Days and New York Stories: “I’ve known Larry for years,” Allen says. “He’s terrific.”

It’s a mouth-watering combination (there goes that feeling of hope again), as is his intended project for this autumn. He has been asked by Placido Domingo to direct Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi for the Los Angeles Opera. “I was cajoled and badgered into it,” Allen says. “I’m sure they’ll regret it, although I’ll do my best.”

Would he ever return to his roots in stand-up – his occupation prior to co-writing and directing his What’s Up, Tiger Lily (1966)? “Sometimes I think I’d really like to do it again,” he admits. The problem is, he says it’s the hardest writing of all. “You’ve got to get them laughing right away and keep them laughing over and over again. It’s very difficult.”

And maybe that’s the problem with Woody Allen right now: he just hasn’t kept us laughing.

Cassandra’s Dream opens on May 23 2008. Vicky Cristina Barcelona has its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday 17 May 2008

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