Cinematic Rare Book Treasure Hunt

September 1, 2016 9:51 AM

What are some movies (or books, but I'm most interested in finding image stills) where the plot is about folks trying to find a particular special or rare book.

Think "Name of the Rose," "Book of Eli," or the "9th Gate." "Raiders of the Lost Ark" almost qualifies, because the commandment tablets were a form of writing.

posted by ikahime to Media & Arts (13 answers total)

Rare book in movies search
posted by Kwadeng at 10:15 AM on September 1, 2016

Serendipity
posted by Captain_Science at 10:18 AM on September 1, 2016

If you want to expand to TV, that was a pretty major plot point of the first season of The Strain.
posted by archimago at 10:35 AM on September 1, 2016

In "National Treasure" they search for a copy of the Declaration of Independence. In the second NT film, there's a search for a page from a book, IIRC.
posted by JimN2TAW at 10:37 AM on September 1, 2016

The wikipedia list of films about books is short, but here you go.
posted by gregr at 10:48 AM on September 1, 2016

Heh. There was an episode of the kid's cartoon, Arthur, with that very plot on earlier this week.

Summary
After finding an old novel entitled "93 Million Miles in a Balloon", Arthur discovers that the last pages of the book are missing and embarks on a hunt to find out what the ending is.
posted by Kriesa at 11:51 AM on September 1, 2016

U-571 is about trying to capture both an enigma machine and its code book. The machine was more important, but the code book was also an objective.

Army of Darkness has a portion dedicated to getting the Necronomicon, although that is only part of the movie.
posted by Hactar at 12:01 PM on September 1, 2016

In the second NT film, there's a search for a page from a book, IIRC.

A page from John Wilkes Booth's diary, perhaps?
posted by DrAstroZoom at 2:03 PM on September 1, 2016

The Ninth Gate
posted by davebush at 2:08 PM on September 1, 2016

"The Fifth Element" hits the Raiders button at the beginning.
posted by rhizome at 2:15 PM on September 1, 2016

Possession is about the search for a letter, by way of a bunch of archival work. There should be some good stuff in there.
posted by momus_window at 4:23 PM on September 1, 2016

The play Underneath the Lintel is a odd little literary "mystery" about a librarian's quest to find out who returned a library book that's 100 years overdue. It's not a movie, but there are stills from various different productions, if you search Google images.
posted by stellarc at 4:35 PM on September 1, 2016

I haven't seen it, but Roman Polanski's The Ninth Gate's plot is about ' the search for a rare, ancient book that purportedly contains a magical secret for summoning the Devil'.

Maybe Blair Witch: Book of Shadows?

John Carpenter's In The Mouth of Madness, about a Stephen King style author's strange manuscript?

Speaking of SK, maybe Misery?

There's got to be a ton of horror movies with this trope.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 10:43 PM on September 21, 2016