Bruce McGill wears an Arnex Pocketwatch

Faber College, 1962. A motorcycle climbs the stairs inside the Delta Tau Chi house, and the man riding it is Daniel Simpson Day. Bruce McGill plays D-Day as the quietest of the Deltas in John Landis' Animal House, the one on the Harley who keeps his own counsel while Belushi's Bluto tears the place apart.

His watch is easy to miss, because it is not on his wrist. Late in the film, as the fraternity sets out to wreck the Faber homecoming parade, the camera holds on a gold hunter-case pocket watch open in D-Day's hand. The dial reads Arnex. Under the name is a small engraving of a steam locomotive, then the words 17 Jewels and Incabloc, with Swiss Made at the bottom and a small-seconds dial at six o'clock.

Arnex was an inexpensive brand of Swiss-made watches, the sort sold through American catalogs and department stores rather than jewelers. The railroad dial was period decoration, the kind of thing you bought because it looked like more watch than it cost. By 1962 the pocket watch had mostly given way to the wristwatch. In the close-up D-Day holds the case open and reads it, a few minutes before eleven, with the homecoming parade about to start.