Personally, I am not sure just what Deleuze means by the stratigraphic
character of the image. He raises it immediately after considering direct,
indirect and free indirect registers in the sound image - in speech acts. In
this context he develops some interesting thoughts on the different styles
of free indirect speech in the dialogue of Rohmer and Bresson.

However, when he turns to the visual image is he considering an analogous
analysis of the 'show act' or is he just rehearsing the
modern-cum-postmodern commonplace of the historical stratigraphy of
landscape and culturescape - the bread and butter of modernity's geologists,
ecologists, historians, archaeologists, linguists, etc.

It seems that, at least by analogy with the sound image and its free
indirect style, D would be referring to a stratigraphy of the visual image
that considered its directness, indirectedness, or seamless combination etc.
E.G when  we look at say Far From Heaven there is a Sirk stratum of style
shown through a Haynes stratum of stylistic allusion or homage, and a 50s
stratum of setting, and 2000 stratum of production and exhibition which
would include even the stratum of the actors - down to (concealed but latent
in the costumes) Julianne Moore's (of screen) pregancy.

This kind of stratigraphy is there in all filmic quotation and homage - in
period film representations which are also of their time. eg Magnificent
Ambersons 1940s stratum and c. 1900 stratum. Additionally in M. Ambersons it 
is thematised in the stratification of 1900s modernity between the horse vs. 
the automobile. Or it is in say Caro Diario in the
tectonic strata of  1990s Nanni Moretti and The Bold and the Beautiful on
Stromboli  with the Rosselini/Bergman on Stromboli and even the 500BC
Empedocles on Etna. These strata, direct and indirect, are all combined in 
Moretti's
free indirect style.

D can often use some impressive terminology machinery, imported from diverse
philosophical laboratories or engineered in his own lab, but fast and
loosely. It is almost typical of his rhapsodic philosophical method -
yielding both sparks of insight but sometimes I feel, missing the full
conceptual power of his tools. (Another for instance: Despite referring to 
it, does he really make much use of speech act philosophy?)

Ross

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