A performance technique of Soviet Montage cinema whereby an actor seeks to represent or characterize a social class or other group.

Typage was the term given by Russian director Vsevolod Pudovkin to the practice of casting nonprofessional actors in motion pictures to create a heightened sense of realism.

Social Typage

• Social typage is typically used to imply a comment on a social issue or society.
• Very big in classic Soviet filmmaking of the 1920's.
• Example: In Battleship Pottemkin (1925) a close-up shot of a snarling naval officier is shown to personify the evil of the Old Regime.
• A more recent example is in the 1997 film Rocky IV where a Soviet character resembles a robot, and behaves like a fighting machine.

Psychological Typage

• Dealing with the performance style, the actors are "visually stylized" to have them embody a social or psychological type or category.
• 2 types of Typage, social and psychological, often dominates the "mise-en-scene" of a film.
• "Mise-en-scene" is the arrangement of actors and scenery on a stage for a theatrical production
• Seen in expressionist style films.
• They present grotesque characters, pathological emotional states, and fantastic settings where the visual distortions are indicators of twisted minds or spirits.
• Frankenstein is the perfect example, with distorted features it is portrayed that Frankenstein has a different mind.