Sunday October 11, 2009
A Venetian affair
By JUNE H.L. WONG
Watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre has picked one of the film industry’s most exciting platforms, the Venice Film Festival, to showcase its own creativity and inventiveness.
THE scene: A satellite view of New York City. The camera zooms down onto a traffic-choked street before finally framing the roof of a limousine.
Next, an elegant square-faced wristwatch appears. It’s 15 minutes to two. The watch owner realises he is running late and decides to get out and walk to his destination, the Metropolitian Museum of Art....
This is the opening act for the 1999 movie, The Thomas Crown Affair. Crown, the playboy millionaire art thief, is played by Pierce Brosnan. The watch is “played” by Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso Duo.
Actress Eva Mendes wears a Jaeger-LeCoultre 101 Joaillerie Feuille watch during a photo session at the Hotel Danieli during the recent Venice Film Festival. Although the famous logo can’t be seen because Brosnan reportedly had an exclusive deal with another watch brand, timepiece connoisseurs will immediately recognise the Reverso, one of the most iconic watches ever made.
While the shot of the Reverso in the movie is brief, it is enough to get the message across: the handsome, debonair, risk-taking Tho-mas Crown wears a watch that matches his personality and looks.
Such clever product placements in films are highly sought after. Done well and seamlessly, it can work wonders for the product or brand. Who can forget Richard Gere wearing Cerutti in American Gigolo or Jason Statham at the wheel of an Audi in Transporter or, at the other end of the luxury scale, Reese’s Pieces in ET?
Jaeger-LeCoultre’s appearance in The Thomas Crown Affair is actually a returning role. According to the website, Watch This Movie – Wristwatches In Movies by Edward Heliosz, Steve McQueen also wore a JLC – a gold Memovox – in the original 1968 movie.
Knowing the power of the entertainment industry, JLC cemented its alliance with the film world by sponsoring the Venice Film Festival (VFF) for the last five years.
Jaeger-LeCoultre’s CEO, Jerome Lambert, says the decision was based on the realisation that “you cannot be active in the world of luxury if you do not explore creativity or inventiveness through art.”
Of all the arts, JLC chose film-making because watches and movies are, according to its press release, “Two worlds in which movement is an art, history means wealth and time spells energy.”
When I quote the above to Lambert, he replies: “Voila, that is the soul of it. And a film festival is the epitome of (cinematic) creativity. Since the Venice Film Fes-tival is one of the two main festivals in the world, what you get is the purest expression of that creativity and expression of that year. So it was only logical for the brand to be associated with it,” he explains in an interview.
Our meeting is in Venice’s gorgeous Hotel Danieli that dates back to the 14th century, a few days after the start of the 66th Venice Film Festival on Sept 2.
The VFF or Mostra (short for Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia) is the oldest, but the other main festival at Cannes is arguably the most glamorous. So why Venice and not Cannes?
“Being based in Switzerland, we have always had a very strong and direct link with Italy; it’s a kind of second home for us. Cannes may be (geographically) closer but we prefer the kind of vision and craftsmanship we see in Mostra.
“The difference between Cannes and Mostra is like the difference between Jaeger-LeCoultre and other mass watch brands,” says Lambert.
He elaborates: “The films selected are always unusual, full of intrigue and surprises and are sometimes even uncomfortable.
“But these are the very films which are very inventive and creative and which explore aspects you have not seen or considered.
“It is that kind of pure inventiveness and creativity that are important to Jaeger-LeCoultre because we thrive on the same things.”
Nothing perhaps expresses that better than its 101, named after the calibre that is 80 years old, the world’s smallest mechanical watch movement.
Jaeger-LeCoultre invented the 101 in 1929 to fit the delicate, little jewellery watches made for women of that time. It is a technological marvel because its 98 parts are contained in a space the size of your smallest fingernail.
It requires such painstaking assembly that the manufacture only makes about 50 a year.
No one has topped that simply because, as Lambert says, it can’t get any smaller than that.
“We are already at the limit that allows the wearer to read the time. No other mechanical watch complication is smaller or lighter at 1gm – that’s in the Guinness Book of Records. We have one that is 0.75gm but it’s not officially registered,” he adds.
The company used both Cannes and Mostra to celebrate the 101 – which Queen Elizabeth wore to her coronation in 1953 – by having it on the wrists of its ambassador, German actress Diane Kruger, and other celebrities.
It also unveiled a collection of six commemorative designs, including re-editions of two iconic models, the Joaillerie 101 1938 and the Joaillerie 101 Feuille. (See Design 101, SM13)
Venice was also the setting for the launch for Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Hybris Mechanica 55, a trilogy of the manufacture’s most complicated watches – the Hybris Mechanica à Gyrotourbillon, the Hybris Mechanica à Triptyque and its latest and greatest triumph, the Hybris Mechanica à Grande Sonnerie.
Grande Sonnerie refers to the “holy grail of watch-making” – the musical watch.
Imagine shrinking the complex mechanism that allows London’s Big Ben to strike and chime out the time to fit the small space of a wristwatch and you get an idea of why it’s just a big deal. (See Making sweet music)
The Hybris Mechanica was unveiled at a gala dinner held at the exclusive Hotel Capriani on Guidecca Island, Venice.
Guests included celebrities like Catherine Deneuve, the polo-playing British marchioness Clare Milford Haven and the Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson.
To Lambert, the three Hybris Mechanica watches are excellent examples of pushing creativity and inventiveness in watch-making to the max.
He explains “hybris” means craziness or folly and ‘‘mechanica” refers to mechanics.
“So literally, it means mechanical craziness but it also means limitless, measureless in terms of what we can achieve,” he says.
Lambert traces that “can do” spirit to the ancient Greek myth of the Titan Prometheus stealing fire from heaven to give to humankind.
“We know Prometheus doesn’t come to a good end, but the story embodies the human capacity to constantly invent, to overcome limitations.
“If we really want to progress, it is not by just following or redoing what has been done.
“We need the folly or craziness to go further, to reach yet another level. That’s the idea we at Jaeger want to pass on,” he says.
Lambert also takes pains to stress on the company’s belief that a visionary spirit must be nurtured by tradition – not surprising, considering JLC has a horological history going back 176 years.
And it’s because it has that accumulated store of knowledge, skills and experience that it can make the leap into folly and create something ingenious.
They say there’s a fine line between madness and genius and whether in movies, watch-making or any creative endeavour, the willingness to cross that line can make all the difference because, as Roman philosopher Seneca (5BCE–65CE) said: “There is no greatness without some touch of madness.” It’s just hybris.
Related Stories:
Making sweet music
Celebrity watching
Leading lady
Design 101
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