A closer look
Humphrey Bogart was notably shorter than his co-star Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, meaning the famously tough, iconic leading man had to stand on wooden blocks or sit on specially elevated cushions during almost all of their romantic scenes together. The studio was deeply paranoid that showing a man looking up at a woman would destroy his rugged cinematic persona, so they essentially forced him to navigate the set wearing platform shoes and standing on hidden apple boxes just to maintain the fragile illusion of dominant masculinity. Every time you watch that heartbreaking, tear-jerking finale on the foggy tarmac, you are watching an actor desperately trying not to trip off a wooden plank while delivering one of the most famous monologues in movie history. It proves that the golden age of Hollywood was just as obsessed with artificial aesthetics and petty insecurities as the modern era of Instagram filters and heavily edited selfies
