Matt Damon wears a Hamilton Piping Rock

Before the bomb, Leslie Groves built the Pentagon. He oversaw the 63 million dollar project with thirteen thousand workers on site at its peak, and in September 1942 the Army moved him onto the Manhattan Project, where he picked J. Robert Oppenheimer to run Los Alamos on the strength of his breadth of knowledge. Matt Damon plays Groves in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer as the military half of the partnership with Cillian Murphy's physicist, the man who hired the scientists and kept the project secret from nearly all of his own government.

Groves wears two Hamiltons in the film, and Hamilton itself documents both: this Piping Rock, which the company dates to the 1920s, and a black dialed Military Ordnance from the 1940s. The brand's production page tells the sourcing story plainly: although the Hamilton archives are extensive, all six vintage references used in the film came from collectors, period pieces gathered through the company's network of enthusiasts rather than modern reissues. The placements run through the cast. Murphy's Oppenheimer wears a Cushion B, an Endicott, and a Lexington; Emily Blunt's Kitty Oppenheimer wears a 14 karat gold Lady Hamilton A-2 from 1947. Guillaume DeLouche handled the props.

Groves's rank carries a footnote the film leaves to history. He ran the project as a temporary major general; the lieutenant general's third star came afterward, by act of Congress, with the date of rank backdated to July 16, 1945, the day of the Trinity test.