Adolfo Celi wears a Rolex Cosmograph Daytona

Le Grand Escogriffe (1976), released abroad as The Big Operator, is a Claude Pinoteau caper from a Jean Herman and Michel Audiard script. Yves Montand plays Émile Morland, an aging crook who hatches a plan to kidnap the small son of a rich arms dealer and swap in a borrowed child for the handover. The arms dealer is Rifai, played by Adolfo Celi, and the plan falls apart when Rifai simply refuses to pay. Celi was a busy character actor of the period, familiar to audiences as a heavy in international thrillers, including a famous turn as a Bond villain.

The watch is harder to stand behind. A single French watch site says Celi wears a steel Rolex Daytona in the film, with no reference, no scene, and no second source to back it up, and the Daytona is not visible in the stills that survive. The Cosmograph Daytona of 1976 was a hand-wound chronograph, a slow seller that Rolex had not yet turned into the watch with a waiting list. On that thin evidence the identification rests: a plausible watch for a wealthy character, named once and not confirmed.