The title of this paper, which translates to, ‘I want him [to be] a man,’ is taken from a climactic scene in the 1969 Egyptian film, Shay? min al-Khu?f (A Touch of Fear, dir. Hussein Kamal). The words are spoken in the film by the austere Jiddi ??tri?s: the ?umda, or chief, of a fictitious village in the rural Egyptian Sa?i?d. When Fu???da, a young girl, asks ??tri?s why he treats his only grandson harshly – preventing him from playing with Fu???da and the other children, amongst other restrictions – ??tri?s responds with the ominous words, ‘??yzuh r?jil’. ??tri?s’s words, I argue, are emblematic of a two-fold concern of Nasserite and post-Nasserite Egypt: a desire for ‘men’; and, a desire to make ‘men’. Taking ??tri?s’s wish as a starting point, this paper seeks to explore the treatment, and the subsequent stakes of representing, ‘masculinity’ as malleable on and off the silver screen in modern Egypt. Accordingly, I explore the representation of ‘masculinity’ as an unstable, moldable construct in three Egyptian films. Isha?at H?ub (A Rumour of Love), directed by F?ti?n ??bd al-Wah?b and released in 1961, is a comedy rife with early Nasserite-era optimism. In contrast, Shay? min al-Khu?f is a dark drama which precedes (and ominously foreshadows) the end of the Nasserite regime in 1970. Finally, I look at Ah?mad al-Gindi?’s Ti?r ?nta (As You Like It, 2009): a post-Nasserite film poised on the cusp of the Arab Spring. Ti?r ?nta, I argue, deliberately recycles and responds to the tropes of ‘idealized’ masculinity dominant in the latter decades of the preceding century: the ‘self-made man’ and the ‘Europeanized gentleman’ (in Isha?at H?ub); and the ‘man who feels no fear’ (in Shay? min al-Khu?f). I argue that each trope – in the original treatments as well as their 2009 resurrections – could be read to reveal a version of masculinity that is not stable or intrinsic but rather externally molded. Even the ‘self-made man’, I argue, is not ‘self’ made - but rather, he is a product of a series of externally orchestrated performances. I attempt to explore the political and social implications of representing ‘masculinity’ not as an intrinsic quality but rather a quiddity shapeable by external factors – and players. In so doing, I hope to question and understand the effects, relevance and reverberations of Nasserite-era socio-political dynamics on the films – and culture – of ‘molding masculinities’, in modern-day Egypt.