Stanley Townsend wears an Oris Classic Date

Francois Girard's The Song of Names, which premiered at Toronto in 2019, adapts Norman Lebrecht's novel into a story about loss that outlasts a war. An English music publisher's family takes in a young Polish-Jewish violin prodigy, Dovidl Rapoport, on the eve of the Second World War, and in 1951 the boy vanishes on the night of his London debut, sending the grown son of the household searching for decades. Tim Roth plays the adult Martin and Clive Owen the adult Dovidl.

Stanley Townsend plays Gilbert Simmonds, the publisher who brings Dovidl into his home and stakes his own money on the debut that never comes. On Gilbert's wrist is an Oris Classic Date, the Swiss house's understated dress automatic: a two-tone case, a silvered dial with applied numerals, and a brown leather strap. It is a fitting watch for a man of the post-war London music trade, a quiet time-and-date piece from one of the last independent Swiss watchmakers.