On the Marriage Broker Joke as Cited by Sigmund Freud in Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious or Can the AvantGarde Artist Be Wholed (1977)

Freud established that jokes were structurally akin to dreams in their use of condensation displacement representation by opposites punning and nonsense All of these strategies are much in evidence in Lands marvelously duplicitous ON THE MARRIAGE BROKER JOKE so clever and original a filmmaker as to make most others not to mention his critics seem flatfooted by comparison ON THE MARRIAGE BROKER JOKE harks back to Bunuels early work Not only is it structured like a dream and filled with sexual imagery but like Un Chien Andalou it smacks of being an insiders joke played upon the avantgarde Where Bunuel used the insights of psychoanalysis to satirize Christianity Land with an almost equal perversity reverses the process and uses Christianity to send up Freud J Hoberman American Film