Tag: Jacob & Co Opera Godfather 50th Anniversary
Jacob & Co Opera Godfather 50th Anniversary
Jacob & Co. has dropped a $330 USD music box tourbillon to mark the 50th Anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.
The Jacob & Co Opera Godfather 50th Anniversary certainly isn’t light on talking points with the full collector’s set including the watch, a red rose pen from Montegrappa and an engraved crystal decanter. The vast 49mm watch houses the 634-component calibre JCMF04 movement which rotates inside the case and packs in a triple-axis flying tourbillon, a music box complication that plays Nino Rota’s ‘The Godfather’ theme using 120 pins against two combs and an enamel red rose at its centre.
“The Godfather is not just a great movie because of the way it was shot and directed,” says Benjamin Arabov, Jacob & Co. CEO. “It also contains some of the greatest scenes and dialogue in movie history.” The watch illustrates that sentiment both inside and outside the case. The twin rose gold barrels that power the music box complication are engraved with the movie’s most memorable quotes – including “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse” – on the exterior, bringing new lines of dialogue to the fore as they rotate.
The 18K grey gold caseband of the watch also features 13 photo-realistic scenes from the film in narrative order engraved over 30 hours using medical-grade ‘femtolaser’ technology, a process which allows for 256 tones within the metal. The Godfather is the favourite film of Jacob & Co founder, Jacob Arabo, and was the first film he watched after moving to the US from Uzbekistan at the age of 14.
Jacob & Co. went to Sicily to release its latest opulent opus, the Jacob & Co Opera Godfather 50th Anniversary, which features a rotating movement with a triple-axis flying tourbillon and double-cylinder music box playing the 120 notes of the movie’s theme song. Adorned with pioneering laser-engraving on its 49-millimeter case band, the Godfather 50th Anniversary is a true horological commemoration of the first movie in the iconic Godfather trilogy of films based on the book by Mario Puzo. The setting in which Jacob and Co. presented the new Jacob & Co Opera Godfather 50th Anniversary was as precious as the watch itself: the Grand Hotel Timeo in Taormina, Sicily, surrounded by the glittering Mediterranean, lush gardens scented with flowers, thyme and oregano, and the ever-present subtly huffing and puffing Etna volcano in the background.
So, what is new on this 49-millimeter watch? Well, this iteration is more connected with the movie than any other timepieces in the collection first introduced back in 2019.
The Jacob & Co Opera Godfather 50th Anniversary movie – in part shot in the vicinity of the hotel – was the first film that Jacob Arabo saw upon moving to the United States of America in 1981. Arriving as a penniless 14-year-old immigrant from Uzbekistan in 1979, it had taken him two years to make enough money to afford a ticket to a movie theatre.
The rest is history. In the year 1986 he founded the New York-based company now run by his son Benjamin Arabov. “Family is really a major theme in the Godfather, which is why we feel such a strong connection with the movies,” said Benjamin Arabov regarding the three-time Oscar and five-time Golden Globe winning trilogy directed by Frances Ford Coppola.
“The movement is infinitely more complex than it seems,” explained Alain Schiesser, CEO of Le Cercle des Horlogers, manufacturer of the exclusive Jacob & Co. caliber.