There are a number of film narratives that take up the rather Hitchcockian idea of following an an object. Sometimes this motivates an anthology narrative, telling a group of mildly related stories (a la Ophuls LA RONDE). Examples include Julien Duvier's TALES OF MANHATTAN (1946), which follows a coat, THE GUN (John Badham, 1974) which follows a gun, Sacha Guitry's Les Perles de la Couronne uses a story of a necklace to construct a story which covers generations; TWENTY BUCKS (1993) by Keva Rosenfeld. There's also a German film, I believe, that follows a penny? These are narratives of circulation. DIABLE DE PARIS is an antecedent.