Throughout the 1960s, film critics in Egypt called for the production of socially-aware cinema; films that would position Egypt on the global film-stage and engage in a wider battle against imperialism on international screens. They dismissed private-sector comedies and musicals as “whirlpools of frivolity” lambasting them as money-making enterprises that relied on sex, stars and violence to lure in “third-class” audiences. Much to their chagrin, however, private sector films that relied on salacious scenes, violence, and slapstick comedy actually drew in the majority of box-office receipts, as audiences ignored the jeremiads of film critics. By questioning the dominant frames around which the 1960s have been studied, and the disproportionate scholarship paid to a select number of canonised, and critically-acclaimed, films, my paper will spotlight a neglected story of Egyptian cinema audiences and the critics (and canonisation processes) they shunned. It will draw into sharp focus how class shaped understandings of what constituted “quality” cinema, and how it shaped broader attitudes towards audiences.