For certain parts of French society, cinema-going was equivalent to “slumming” during the 1920s and early 1930s. An upperclass spectator, if he went to the cinema at all, would sneak in as if committing a crime. But at the same time, the surrealists, as well as some writers, artists, and critics embraced cinema because of this association with the lower-classes, the faubourgs of Paris, and nighttime culture. Whether considered dangerous or uplifting, the real subject of debate about the cinema was the nature of its influence on the lower classes. These debates about the cinema are part of a larger debate about the vogue of “slumming”, which was a leisure activity in itself. By analyzing surrealist writing about cinema within the little-studied context of working-class cinema culture, this article proposes a new interpretation of surrealist writings about the cinema as themselves scandalous. By the end of the 1920s, the cinema had become at once a more stable and a more acceptable activity: “slumming” had lost its danger, and the cinema became a part of everyday life.