The aim of this article is to illustrate some key points that will hopefully encourage further reflection on the cinematic representations and meanings of populism in both an Italian and international context. Firstly, we attempt a definition of populism as applied to cinema, drawing on both political science and the literature on film history. Secondly, we turn to film critics and directors, discussing the views some of them hold on populism and film in relation to the Italian cinema of recent years. Thirdly, we discuss how the star system provides a useful point of convergence for our analysis of cinema and populism, looking in particular at postwar commedia all'italiana and the role of Totò in this context. Finally, we draw some conclusions and suggest what directions future research on the issue of populism and Italian cinema could take.

In the period between 1965 and 1967, a series of acts of violence took place against Italian capelloni (young men with long hair). These attacks frequently ended with an attempted or actual cutting of these young men's hair. This article analyses how these incidents were represented in newspapers, teen magazines, and in the short film Il mostro della domenica by Steno (Stefano Vanzina, 1968) featuring Totò. Drawing on literature about the shaving of French and Italian collaborationist women in the aftermath of the Second World War (Virgili 2002), it explores the potential gender anxieties caused by young men's long hairstyles, as represented by the media. The attacks on the capelloni are interpreted as a punishment for the male appropriation of a traditionally feminine attribute of seduction: the cutting of young men's hair symbolically reaffirmed an ideal of virile masculinity in a moment of ‘decline of virilism’ (Bellassai 2011) in Italian society.