Brigitte Bardot, Romy Schneider and Maurice Ronet’s Aqua Graph

Hey Enicaristi,

it’s been a while that I wrote something here. The reasons are primary the lack of new information or discoveries (but still working on it, be sure! 🙂 ) and the soon arrival of a new small Enicaristi to this world.

Nevertheless, thanks to Enicar Collector @longdele who forwarded me a snapshot from a movie, I have something new to share.

I was allways wondering, why there are so many known Sherpa Graph owners, also cool stories about Super Graphs (remember the Simonet) and military provenance of the Jet Graph but nothing about the Aqua Graph. It’s clean look and diving focus does make it to one of my favourite watches from the Graph line.

Well thanks to @longdele’s sharp eyes we are about to change that.

Lars, @Longdeles actual name, showed me a pic from the French movie “Les galets d’Etretat” from 1971 and asked “isn’t this an Aqua Graph?”. And it sure was, so I digged deeper.

The actor from the movie wearing the watch is Maurice Ronet. Ronet was as French as the movie and was living from 1927 to 1983. He was maybe not that well known in the international film business, but together with Alain Delon and Jean-Paul Belmondo he was one of the big three French actors of his time. Fun fact: His second wife was the daugther of Charlie Chaplin.

But back to Enicar. The first appearance of the Aqua Graph on Ronet’s wrist I can date to 1969 and the movie “Femmes” with Brigitte Bardot. The watch is perfectly visible and we can allready identify the model: Its a a nice Aqua Graph MK II with red lollipop and paddle hands. The bracelet looks like the standard Enicar BOR. Since the watch was introduced in 1966/67 it could be that he bought it a bit earlier.

Maurice Ronet was also playing together with Alain Delon in the famous movie “The Swimming pool”. Maybe Delon, who was a big fan of the Sherpa ultradive since 1967 (more on this here Alain Delon’s Ultradive ) passed on the Enicar bug to his acting collegue.

Well let’s try to be not that much distracted from Brigitte and go along with the next movie. In 1971 he was doing the allready mentioned “Les galets d’Etretat”. After watching the movie, I found several other good shots of the watch on his wrist. As much as I can recommend the watch, the movie was so-so 😉 .

Also in 1971 Maurice Ronet was doing a movie together with the famous Romy Schneider. The film is called “Qui”. Well in regards to the Aqua Graph, we now know the answer.

The last time I could find the Aqua Graph on his wrist was the movie “Seul le vent connait la reponse” from 1974. That’s still kind of remarkable, since I guess 5 years was a long time for a movie star to wear the same watch. Also interesting in the shown pic is the visible wear at the bezel. I guess he wasn’t just having the Aqua Graph for movies on his wrist but also at private occoasions.

After 1974 I couldn’t find any additional evidence or pictures of this or another Enicar together with him. My conclusion is, he likes beautiful watches as much as his beautiful female acting collegues.

Kind of interesting to see another great French actor wearing an Enicar. Maybe Enicar was extra popular in France or there was some kind of company sponsorship (remember the three ultradives in “Les Aventuriers”?). Enough Questions to dig deeper in the future.

Maybe you know more, have some documents or stories to share? Please go ahead and write me a message.