Robert De Niro wears a Mathey-Tissot Rectangular Gold

Frank Sheeran spends The Irishman telling his story from a wheelchair, an old hitman explaining how he painted houses for the mob and, by his own account, killed Jimmy Hoffa. Martin Scorsese built the 2019 film from Charles Brandt's book I Heard You Paint Houses, and he lets Sheeran's standing show on his wrist. Early on it is a plain gold Bulova. Later it is the gold Mathey-Tissot, and the change of watch is the change in the man's rank.

Hoffa gives him the watch, at a union banquet. It is a solid gold Mathey-Tissot with a rectangular case, a bezel paved in diamonds, and a flat woven-gold bracelet that matches the dial. In the driving shot you can see all of it, the stones around the case and a heavy gold ring on the same hand. Oracle Time called it stunning if gaudy, the kind of wealth men used to wear on purpose. In the story it is the sign of Sheeran's allegiance to Hoffa, a loyalty the film spends three and a half hours testing against his loyalty to the Mafia.

Mathey-Tissot is the deep cut. The company has been in the Swiss Jura since 1886, never as famous as Rolex or Omega and easy to mix up with the unrelated Tissot. It built minute repeaters and observatory chronographs, and during the First World War General Pershing chose Mathey-Tissot watches to give to members of his own staff. So the watch Hoffa hands his enforcer comes from a name once given out as a military honor, which is close to what it is on screen: a reward for loyalty, from the man that loyalty would eventually betray.