Francis Ford Coppola’s custom-made watch is the most expensive F.P. Journe ever sold

Francis Ford Coppola has long understood what a watch can say on screen. In Apocalypse Now, Colonel Kurtz wears a battle-scarred Rolex GMT-Master; in The Godfather: Part II, Michael Corleone’s ascent is quietly marked by an Omega Constellation. Even in Megalopolis, Coppola arms Adam Driver with an enigmatic, Art Deco-inflected timepiece — a choice as bold and divisive as the film itself.

Megalopolis is also the reason Coppola’s rarest watch recently went under the hammer. The film was self-financed, prompting the director to part with significant personal assets — including his Napa Valley wineries and this unique F.P. Journe prototype which was made expressly for him. When the watch appeared at Phillips’ New York Watch Auction XIII in December, it achieved a record-setting $10.755 million, the highest price ever paid for an F.P. Journe.

The watch was offered alongside several other pieces from Coppola’s personal collection, among them a Patek Philippe World Time, a Breguet Classique, a Blancpain Minute Repeater and an IWC Portugieser Chronograph. Yet it was the so-called ‘FFC’ — a true one-of-one created specifically for the director — that dominated the auction, the result of a long and unlikely friendship with François-Paul Journe himself.

Francis Ford Coppola

Coppola’s introduction to Journe came in 2009, when his wife presented him with a platinum Chronomètre à Résonance for Christmas. Three years later, he invited the watchmaker to his Inglenook vineyard in Napa Valley, where conversations ranged from cinema to art and the finer points of mechanical watchmaking. At some point, Coppola posed an unusual question: had a human hand ever been used to indicate time on a watch dial?

It proved a catalyst of a question for Journe. What followed was the slow, exacting development of what would become the FFC: a watch that uses a human hand to indicate the twelve hours through a shifting combination of raised fingers and an articulated thumb. It remains the only F.P. Journe watch to originate from an idea not conceived by Journe himself — yet it was one he embraced fully, dedicating years of prototyping to realising it without compromise.

Journe found an unlikely historical precedent in Ambroise Paré, the 16th-century surgeon whose innovations in prosthetic limbs were an early indication of modern mechanical engineering. Paré’s ‘Le Petit Lorrain’ — an articulated prosthetic hand fashioned from iron and leather, its movements governed by concealed gears and springs — offered a particularly compelling parallel with the meticulous mechanical constructions of modern watchmaking.

Rendered in metal, the dial’s hand — an archetypal automaton — gives the watch a distinctly retro-futuristic, steampunk character. Overlapping plates and exposed screws recall medieval gauntlets as much as industrial machinery. To animate it, Journe adapted his Octagon calibre 1300.3, refining the movement over seven years until it achieved the desired effect within a remarkably slim profile of just 8.1mm.

Two prototypes were crafted: one for Journe himself, the other for Coppola. The director’s piece, however, remains singular — engraved with his initials and fitted with steel bridges. A blue variant appeared at Only Watch 2021, and bespoke examples continue to be made for a select few clients each year. Yet it is Coppola’s watch that tells the story, and, true to form, the only reason he agreed to part with it was to fund his own artistic endeavours.

“I’m proud to fully support the sale of this watch through Phillips to fund the creation of his artistic masterpieces in filmmaking,” said Journe at the time of the sale. “Speaking with Francis in 2012, and hearing his idea on the use of a human hand to indicate time inspired me to create I watch I never could have imagined myself.”

“I’m proud to fully support the sale of this watch…”

“The challenge was formidable,” he added. “Exactly the type of matchmaking project I adore. After years of collaborating directly with Francis in the development process, it was a great pleasure to deliver the FFC prototype to him in 2021.”

Coppola ultimately delivered Megalopolis, a film met with mixed reviews, yet one of which he remains quietly proud, especially “at a time when so few have the courage to go against the prevailing trends of contemporary moviemaking,” he said. The FFC watch, however, tells its own story — of a rare collaboration between filmmaker and watchmaker, and of the patience, curiosity, and craft that brought it into being.

Want more from the auction house? Here’s why Phillips Perpetual was made for the modern watch collector…

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