It has often been argued that the advance of print capitalism in Egypt accelerated the emergence of an educated Egyptian middle class, which came to be known as the effendis, and whose influence on Egyptian society reached its peak in the interwar period. Scholarship on the effendis seems to present a consensus that they functioned as agents and negotiators of modernity, i.e. as intermediaries between uneducated Egyptians and modern progressive social values. Egyptian cinema of the interwar period and up until 1952 engaged with this idea in a complex manner and occasionally presented a counter-narrative. This counter narrative could be traced in the genre of romantic-comedy in which the effendi is caricatured as a stagnate regressive person whose world view and everyday life practices are constrained by his adherence to, and his blind imitation of, modern European social practices, as well as by his idolization of governmental careers. This satirical depiction is often achieved by means of a constructed juxtaposition between the character of effendi and that of an uneducated ibn al-balad (al-ghayr muta`llim) whose actions and principles are depicted, ironically, as far more progressive than those of the ‘modern’ effendi. One of Egypt’s most famous comedians, who specialized in playing the role of the uneducated progressive ibn al-balad, was the French-educated actor, ‘Abd al-Fatt?? al-Qa?r? (1905-1965). This paper will capitalize on the work of Sawsan al-Misiri (Ibn al-Bald: a concept of Egyptian Identity) to analyze the metaphors used in constructing al-Qasri’s most notorious – and popular – comic film characters. It will focus on the uneducated progressive ibn al-balad as played by al-Qa?r? in the following celebrated movies: Ma‘lish Y? Zahr (What Bad Luck, 1950), Laylat al-?inah (The Wedding Night, 1951), Al-Ust?dhah F??imah (Fatima the Attorney, 1952), and Bayit al-Natt?sh (The Swindler’s House, 1952). All of these films appeared at a propitious moment, at the tail end of Egypt’s ‘liberal’ era and the onset of the Nasserist revolution.