Movies and Life: Joe Morgenstern ’53, Film Critic

It’s Oscar time, a good occasion to chat with Joe Morgenstern ’53, who became only the third film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2005 for his insightful and penetrating reviews of controversial movies including The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11.

Morgenstern, who earned a bachelor’s degree in English (magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa), was the film critic for Newsweek from 1965 to 1983 and for The Wall Street Journal from 1995 until his retirement in 2022. In between, he was a screenwriter on Law & Order, a columnist for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, a frequent contributor to New York Times Magazine, and a co-founder of the National Society of Film Critics.

What brought you to Lehigh?
I was from northern New Jersey, and I had the correct sense that Lehigh had a really good English department. I loved to write. I wrote a little for the Brown and White, but only because I was a smartass with opinions about everything and occasionally, I would sound off in some haughty editorial. I desperately wanted to be a disc jockey and was on Lehigh’s radio station, WLRN.

How did you become a film critic?
All I knew when I got out of school was that I wanted to write. I had no clue about how to find someone who would pay me to do it. I wandered around New York City leaving resumes, and my first true job was at Gimbel’s department store in an advertising department intern program. I then worked at The New York Times as an office boy, and then, through a confluence of geography and serendipity, a foreign correspondent. Eventually I moved to the Herald Tribune where I was a third-string movie critic, entertainment writer, and their off-Broadway critic. I went to Newsweek in 1965.

What made you such a great movie critic?
I don’t know about “great,” but in hindsight I see that I was a perfect fit for that career — I was a smart but lonely kid who spent a lot of time by myself in movie theaters, just loving movies and soaking them up. That’s kind of a common denominator for movie critics.

What was it like winning the Pulitzer?
If you have a choice between winning and losing, take winning. I welcomed it because obviously it’s a validation. I enjoyed it because it involved a really terrific party.

Do you have a favorite movie?
I have a long list of movies I love, but my favorite at the moment is In the Mood for Love (2000) by Wong Kar-Wai. It’s so mysterious and beautiful.

I’ve always been an apostle of the big-screen experience, but I don’t have an unshakeable faith that theaters are going to survive in their present form.

Do you have a pick for this year’s Academy Award-nominated films?
Now that I don’t have to write about them, I don’t see as many as I once did — although I am still a member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. I just caught up with Anatomy of a Fall. It’s an amazing film, one of many fine international features and documentaries that were released last year. But it does seem like the mainstream movie business is just becoming nothing but awards, awards, awards. It didn’t used to be that way. It’s become a horse race, and people are interested in horse races. That certainly hasn’t stopped me loving or going to movies, though.

How have the movies changed since you first became a critic?
We’re more insular as a nation — less interested in foreign films, less willing or able to read subtitles. I had a 20-year gap in being a film critic between Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal, and what I came back to was this alien landscape of merchandising budgets that were bigger than production budgets, and every studio vying to win the weekend and capture an audience before the crappy reviews or word of mouth caught up with the film. And most obviously, of course, theatrical films are being eclipsed by what is rightly called TV’s second golden age.

What’s next for film?
Lots of good movies this year found an audience: Past Lives, Barbie, Oppenheimer, and Poor Things. I’ve always been an apostle of the big-screen experience, but I don’t have an unshakeable faith that theaters are going to survive in their present form. What used to be called art movie houses are already history, and most of the independent film movement has been shoved online. But I’m a movie lover, so I’m open to the idea that movies will still surprise us.