Yves Montand wears a Breitling Navitimer

Laurent Bermann is a criminologist who writes about violence. Yves Montand plays him in Philippe Labro's 1974 thriller, come to the off-season Côte d'Azur to work on a study of it and attacked there himself, more or less at random. The substitute doctor who treats him, Constance Weber (Katharine Ross), becomes his lover.

On his wrist is a Breitling Navitimer, and very probably Montand's own. The watch column that names it notes he wore a Navitimer in other films of the period and was photographed in one off the set, the mark of a personal watch rather than a wardrobe choice. In the film's close embraces it reads clearly enough: a chronograph with three sub-dials and the slide-rule bezel that is the Navitimer's signature. Breitling built it in 1952 for pilots, the rotating bezel a circular slide rule for working out fuel burn and ground speed in the cockpit. This is the steel version, on a leather strap.