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No one can deny that the Rolex Submariner or Pierce Brosnan’s Omega Seamaster are perfect movie watches, ideal accompaniments to James Bond’s exploits. The former was literally taken from the wrist of Cubby Broccoli on the set of Dr. No, since Rolex themselves saw nothing in the burgeoning franchise. The latter was a clever decision by wardrobe grande dame Lily Hemming, on the basis of Brosnan’s blue eyes and the fact most Royal Naval commanders default to Omega’s diver when they earn their stripes.
But short of Sean Connery’s perfectly timed explosive salvo in Goldfinger, or the chassis of a runaway Soviet train being lasered in Goldeneye, these are mere props. We need to look elsewhere to see clocks and watches being integrated into the very fabric of movies, befitting the horological nature of cinema with its split-second timing and intricate pacing.
Christian Marclay’s video-art masterpiece ‘The Clock’ stitched minute-long clips from 1,440 different films and TV shows to chart every successive minute of a 24-hour day via a clock or watch dial featured somewhere in shot
This is perhaps best emphasised by Christian Marclay’s video-art masterpiece ‘The Clock’. Unveiled in 2010 and last exhibited at the Tate Modern in 2019, Marclay and his tireless recruits stitched minute-long clips from 1,440 different films and TV shows to chart every successive minute of a 24-hour day via a clock or watch dial featured somewhere in shot, or spoken.
It’s utterly hypnotic: should one of just five galleries that secured a DVD be showing it (always played in real time). The overwhelming impression is that of time’s hold on human behaviour and its cinematic role in governing tension. Filmic clichés centre around certain time-stamps: early evenings in romcoms are filled with dates nervously checking watches or women running late because of a wardrobe crisis.
When you’re talking about movie watches, nothing beats Bond
Heading up to midnight, everyone starts losing their minds. Take Ryan Gosling’s character in Drive (2011). True to the original book by James Sallis, adapted with abrasive flair by Danish director Nicholas Winding Refn, the character’s inherited Patek Philippe – strapped to the steering wheel of his Chevy Malibu – counts down his getaway with an off-kilter tick. Aside from the props department using flimsy fakes rather than a real Patek Calatrava, it brings palpable tension to every heist, while Gosling remains steely as ever.
The power of a timepiece on the silver screen may be its ability to move things along by virtue of its perpetual ‘tick’, but there’s added significance to be found in a wristwatch’s sentimental nature. Alfred Hitchcock popularised the term ‘MacGuffin’ as an object lending ‘drive’ to a story. Think the glowing suitcase in Pulp Fiction or, better yet, Bruce Willis’s beloved gold watch in the same film, bequeathed by Christopher Walken’s character Captain Koons.
The Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar (£26,100) worn by Benedict Cumberbatch’s neurosurgeon in Doctor Strange (2016) conveniently chimed with the British actor’s ambassadorship for J-LC
The Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Ultra Thin Perpetual Calendar (£26,100) worn by Benedict Cumberbatch’s neurosurgeon in Doctor Strange (2016) may have conveniently chimed with the British actor’s ambassadorship for J-LC. However, it serves well as a cinematic talisman. Dr S’s hands are rendered useless by a reckless crash in his Lamborghini; having fixed himself, he treasures the watch in its broken state, with its inscription from an old flame: “Time will tell you how much I love you, Christine.”
[NB: the good doctor stores his watch collection in a horizontally oriented, motorised ‘winding’ drawer, despite every automatic mechanical watch relying on a vertical orientation, for gravity to nudge its winding rotor around. Some academic, eh?]
Sometimes the best movie watches are on TV, like this Patek in Breaking Bad
In the phenomenon that was Succession, Jesse Armstrong’s tale of hubris and birth right deployed the luxury watch as social commentary from the very first episode. Prospective son-in-law – not to mention the most obsequious man in television – Tom Wambsgans presents patriarch Logan Roy with a Patek Philippe, joking that, “It’s incredibly accurate. Every time you look at it, it tells you exactly how rich you are.”
Logan doesn’t even try the watch on. Instead, it is given to a Latino family as a bribe to keep quiet about his son Roman’s behaviour towards their little boy. The motif is picked up again in season three, when Kendall Roy convinces naïve cousin Greg to spend $40,000 on a steel Rolex Submariner, a significant over-valuation even in today’s waitlisted market of horological hype. It’s a hierarchy of humiliation that could only be wrenched by the 0.01 per cent.
In the phenomenon that was Succession, Jesse Armstrong’s tale of hubris and birth right deployed the luxury watch as social commentary
Relaunched this year for its 45th birthday, Steve Martin’s character Neal Page wears a ‘grooved’ gold-cased Piaget Polo in Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1988) as another status-setter. The first shot of John Hughes’ bittersweet classic is a screen-filling close-up; an early tension builder given the film’s hapless arc, but with a typically elegant Hughesian pay-off – the Polo goes on to provide the global currency of “a hell of a nice watch,” paying for his night at a sleazy motel. All John Candy’s dishevelled shower-curtain salesman Del Griffith can muster is his digital Casio, resulting in those immortal words, come the next morning: “Those aren’t pillows!”
There’s another watch-led dynamic between two equally mismatched characters in Breaking Bad (2012). TAG Heuer’s iconic, blue-dialled, square cased Monaco ‘chronograph’ is more famously associated with Steve McQueen, worn by his character in the woeful ‘Le Mans’ of 1971 (auctioning recently for a record $2.3m). The same watch formed an unexpectedly affecting totem in the brilliant Netflix series Breaking Bad after it is gifted from Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) to Mr White (Bryan Cranston); as their relationship crumbles, White symbolically abandons the watch out in the middle of nowhere.
Nobody does movie watches quite like Steve McQueen, with his TAG Monaco in Le Mans
Later in Breaking Bad an episode closes with a close-up of the ticking timepiece on Walt’s bedside table: an ominous countdown to the horrors that will shortly unfold. A few episodes later, he calmly times the jailhouse massacre of 10 men within two minutes, with the Monaco’s appropriately crimson second hand setting off around an appropriately crystal-meth blue dial.
Two years later, Christopher Nolan’s futuristic blockbuster ‘Interstellar’ (2014) sees Matthew McConaughey’s character Cooper zooming-in – just as viscerally – on another ticking seconds hand. His former NASA pilot has rejoined the fray on a deep-space mission to secure the future of humanity. Cooper bestows his Hamilton watch to his daughter Murph before takeoff, which – in a typically cerebral pay-off from Nolan – forms a pan-dimensional connection with Murph’s grown-up self, played by Jessica Chastain.
Christopher Nolan’s futuristic blockbuster ‘Interstellar’ (2014) sees Matthew McConaughey’s character Cooper zooming-in – just as viscerally – on another ticking seconds hand
From inside the ‘tesseract’ of the fifth dimension, Cooper sends a message using Morse code through the seconds hand of Murph’s watch. Despite a rich heritage supplying Hollywood’s propmasters with wristwear, Hamilton itself had no idea its ‘Khaki Field Murph’ would be so pivotal to Interstellar’s denouement. Needless to say, the Swiss watchmaker wasted no time releasing an exact reproduction for fans of the film, in a box created with production designer Nathan Crowley to reflect the fifth-dimension.
So there you have it: there are Omegas on Her [officially licensed] Majesty’s Secret Service and Hamilton heirlooms that serve the very functions of space and time. Something for everyone.