He may not have filmed a single second of it, but Mr Christian Marclay’s The Clock is a masterpiece of video art: 1,440 minute-long, painstakingly researched clips from thousands of different film and TV shows, depicting a peripatetic 24-hour day, in real time – whether it’s a close-up shot of a character’s watch, a clock in the background, or an alarm clock “kerchunking” from 5.59 to 6.00 (Groundhog Day, natch).

It’s utterly hypnotic stuff – if you get the chance to see it (only five galleries have secured a copy of the DVD). You exit the screening room in a different state depending on what time of day you visited, disoriented by time’s grip on the human experience – leveraged by filmmakers’ ability to grip their audience, from the early-morning rush to midnight paranoia.

It’s a notion that’s more visceral than ever, since last March when our own personal Groundhog Days set in. So with the likes of Tate Modern or MoMA staying closed for the forseeable, and with home-viewing inspo needed more than ever, here are seven of the best on-screen moments when a watch did much more than signify a character’s status, or advertise a James Bond licensee, when everything hinged on the time itself or the totemic clout of the humble wristwatch.

“The first type of filmic product placement is where a deal is made,” says Mr Darryl Collins, whose company Seesaw Media is the UK’s most successful product placement agency. “But watches,” he notes, “they fall within the second type, ‘prop placement’; a shorthand for what the director wants to get across about a character or setting. Colin Firth’s Bremont in Kingsman reinforces his character’s Britishness, sense of tradition, his military background.”

Kingsman: The Secret Service was the very first cinematic outing for Bremont, and in keeping with the watchmaker’s plucky, keen-as-mustard Britishness, it came about almost accidentally, after the film’s director Mr Matthew Vaughn spotted a Bremont on a colleague’s wrist.

While Bremont’s vintage-hued aviator chronograph served as an institutional signifier for Kingsman, the Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Perpetual Calendar worn by Mr Benedict Cumberbatch’s eponymous neurosurgeon in Doctor Strange is pure, cinematic talisman. His hands might be rendered useless by a reckless crash in his Lamborghini, but he treasures the broken watch as he eventually learns to manipulate time in ways even a Swiss watchmaker could only dream of.

The watch also connects us with Dr Strange’s emotional journey, as we get a peek at the inscription from an old flame: “Time will tell you how much I love you, Christine.” (NB: Dr Strange loses watch-geek points for storing his collection in a drawer of horizontally oriented winders, which need to be vertical in order to work properly.)

Mr Alfred Hitchcock famously referred to it as a “MacGuffin”: an item of zero worth but having a pivotal role in propelling the plot wholesale. Hence, Mr Bruce Willis’s character in Mr Quentin Tarantino’s zeitgeist masterpiece, Pulp Fiction, whose arc is kickstarted back when he was in short trousers, by Mr Christopher Walken’s Captain Koons, who bequeaths his father’s, grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s watch through a typically intense four-minute monologue. The retrieval of the watch, after fleeing his apartment, leads to Coolidge killing Mr John Travolta’s Vincent Vega.

“The way your dad looked at it,” intones Captain Koons, “this watch was your birthright... So he hid it in the one place he knew he could hide something: his ass.” Sentimentality will do that to a man.

True to the original book by Mr James Sallis, as adapted with raw, contemporary flair by Danish director Mr Nicolas Winding Refn, Mr Ryan Gosling’s Driver wore a Patek Philippe gifted by his father as he pledges his services as a getaway driver for a maximum of exactly five minutes.

The over-dubbed ticking was off-putting enough for horophiles, but overshadowed by the props department using flimsy fakes rather than the real thing; a necessary measure given the cost of trashing a real 5196G Calatrava every time a stunt went wrong. Authenticity aside, it was enough to bring palpable tension to every heist, while Mr Gosling remained his usual steely self.

Omega’s rocksteady Speedmaster is as mythical as it gets, in a world (or solar system) as mythical as watches. It’s even known as the “moonwatch”, Velcro-ed around Mr Buzz Aldrin’s spacesuit in all those Hasselblad shots from the lunar surface. But you can forget about Apollo 11. Thanks to Mr Ron Howard, we all know that Apollo 13’s “successful failure” of 1970 was what truly earned the Speedie its coveted Silver Snoopy prize from Nasa.

With all his instrumentation shut down following the rupture of a service module oxygen tank, command module pilot Mr Jack Swigert (or Mr Kevin Bacon, depending on your perspective) was reduced to using his chronograph to accurately time the 14-second thruster burn that corrected the crew’s course and allowed for their safe reentry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

As well as his own commercial ventures (the eclectic mix of Aviator gin and co-ownership of Wrexham FC), actor Mr Ryan Reynolds partners with a select few brands. Swiss watchmaker Piaget is among them, but you have to love what sealed his deal as a brand ambassador: Mr Reynolds is a Planes, Trains And Automobiles superfan.

The very first shot of Mr John Hughes’ classic is a screen-filling close-up of the yellow-gold Piaget Polo owned by Mr Steve Martin’s Neal Page. It’s a status-setter, yes, but as a typically elegant Hughesian pay-off, the Polo goes on to prove the universal currency of one “hell of a nice watch” – let alone Page’s decline – by paying for his night at a sleazy motel with Mr John Candy’s hapless Del Griffith. All Griffith can muster is his Casio, resulting in those immortal words: “Those aren’t pillows!”

Most dwell on Mr Steve McQueen’s Monaco in the woeful Le Mans of 1971 (auctioned recently for a record $2.3m). But Jesse Pinkman’s birthday gift to Walter White in the brilliant AMC series becomes an unexpectedly potent leitmotif, as their relationship crumbles and Walt symbolically abandons the watch out in the middle of nowhere.

Episode four of season five ends with a close-up of the ticking watch on Walt’s bedside table. It feels like an ominous countdown to the horrors that will shortly unfold. Come episode eight, Walt is calmly timing the jailhouse massacre of 10 men within two minutes, from his living room.

Series creator Mr Vince Gilligan is notoriously detail-focused, so it’s a bit disappointing to see Walter pushing the crown rather than the chronograph’s actual start/stop pusher, but once again we get a screen-filler – the Monaco’s appropriately crimson second hand setting off around the crystal meth-blue dial. By the time Walt hits the chronograph pusher (or crown) again, two minutes have passed, as well as 10 men.