Brad Pitt wears a Patek Philippe Golden Ellipse

In By the Sea, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play Roland and Vanessa, an American couple whose marriage is quietly coming apart at a French seaside resort in the 1970s. Jolie wrote and directed; Pitt plays Roland, a writer who is not writing. In the scene shown here the two of them lie tangled together on a terrace, and on Roland's wrist, against his wife's shoulder, is a Patek Philippe.

The watch is a Patek Philippe Golden Ellipse, a vintage one, reference 3748. Patek introduced the Ellipse in 1968 and built its case on the golden ratio, the proportion of roughly one to 1.618 that turns up wherever people argue about what looks right. Pitt's is white gold with a deep blue sunburst dial, worn on the integrated white gold mesh bracelet that came with it, period-correct for a film set in the 1970s.

Brad Pitt is a serious Patek collector, so the on-screen choice was an easy one. Off screen there was a second Patek: Jolie had a 1952 Patek chronometer engraved for Pitt with 'To Roly from Nessa,' the names of these two characters. By the Sea was the last film the two of them made together.