John Randolph wears a Rolex Oyster Perpetual

John Frankenheimer's Seconds (1966) opens with Arthur Hamilton, a Scarsdale banking executive played by John Randolph, contacting a secret outfit called the Company, which fakes his death, rebuilds his face, and releases him into a new life as the painter Tony Wilson, played by Rock Hudson, who took the part to get out of romantic comedies. The film lost money on release and grew a cult afterward, and James Wong Howe's black-and-white photography earned an Academy Award nomination.

Randolph knew something about having an identity taken away. He and his wife had been called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1955, took the Fifth, and were blacklisted; Seconds was his first Hollywood film in over a decade, and Frankenheimer cast two more blacklist survivors alongside him, Will Geer as the Old Man and Jeff Corey as Mr. Ruby.

The watch gets the kind of attention most films reserve for faces. At one point the camera closes on Hamilton checking the time until the watch fills the frame: a steel Rolex Oyster Perpetual on a black leather strap, smooth bezel, baton markers, hands a minute shy of noon, sharp enough that the dial's Superlative Chronometer Officially Certified text can be read off the screen.