An Inn in Tokyo (1935)
Directed by Yasujirô Ozu

Film Review

It is probably no coincidence that An Inn in Tokyo, the bleakest of Yasujirô Ozu's silent films, and the one that most powerfully expresses the misery of poverty, coincides with a period in the director's life when he was himself in straitened circumstances.  Although greatly respected by his employers at Shôchiku studio, his income was pretty derisory (a reflection of his lack of success at the box office), and the previous year he had had to bear the emotional and presumably financial cost of his father's funeral.  Although the film was written by Ozu in collaboration with Masao Arata and Tadao Ikeda it is credited to Uinzato Mone, an obvious corruption of the phrase "without money".  Even in penury, Ozu enjoyed his little joke.

An Inn in Tokyo treads similar ground to Ozu's earlier film Passing Fancy (1933), with Takeshi Sakamoto once again reprising the role of the down-at-heel father Kihachi.  This time, Kihachi is encumbered with two young sons, and his child minding skills are as lamentable as ever - in one scene he admits to having contemplated killing himself and his offspring.  Without the comic lead-in that was a feature of many of Ozu's previous silent films, An Inn in Tokyo starts on a sombre note and sustains its mood of hopelessness right through to the end, and even though Kihachi manages to finally redeem himself by an act of self-sacrifice, he does so in a way that will leave his children with enduring scars (as Ozu himself was scarred by the long-term separation from his father).

The film begins with Kihachi and his sons walking through what appears to be a barren wasteland - in fact the setting is Tokyo's industrial flatlands in the Koto district.  It is a scene of abject desolation, devoid of life and dominated by the hulking presence of water towers, with factory chimneys belching acrid smoke in the background.  The struggle to survive in a cruel world is palpably rendered, in a way that instantly calls to mind the great masterpieces of Italian neo-realism.  The mood and the setting are not too far from what we find in Vittorio De Sica's Sciuscià (1946) and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accattone (1961), but Ozu manages to extract even more gut-wrenching pathos from the situation by, for example, getting his characters to partake in an imaginary picnic when they can no longer afford the luxury of real food.

As his last silent film, College is a Nice Place (1936), has been lost, An Inn in Tokyo has the distinction of being Ozu's final surviving silent film.  Prior to its release, it was given a soundtrack consisting of a score and some songs, none of which Ozu had any say over.  Although it wasn't until 1936 that Ozu finally made the transition to sound, with The Only Son, he had long wanted to make talkies (Shôchiku had been making sound films as early as 1931).  He put off the fateful day for as long as he could, waiting for his long-term cameraman Mohara Hideo to complete his own sound system (which finally turned out to be a non-starter).

Would An Inn in Tokyo have been a better film if it had had synchronous recorded dialogue?  Probably not.  Compared with previous Ozu films, the use of dialogue inter-titles is quite modest and, in any event, the visuals are sufficiently potent to make any additional dialogue superfluous.  The simplicity of the plot is emphasised by the sublime simplicity of Ozu's mise-en-scène which manages to amplify the emotional power of the story.  An Inn in Tokyo has a fable-like purity and directness that makes it one of Ozu's most haunting works, a profoundly moving study in human suffering that is composed with the exquisite deftness of a filmmaker who has truly mastered his art.

Film Synopsis

Accompanied by his two young sons, Zenko and Masako, Kihachi wanders around the industrial outskirts of Tokyo, desperately looking for work.  As their resources dwindle to nothing, the two boys capture stray dogs in return for a small cash reward.  Instead of using this money to buy food, Zenko squanders it on an officer's cap, with the result that Kihachi cannot afford to pay for both a meal and a night's shelter at an inn.  Fortunately, having fed his sons, Kihachi runs into an old friend, Otsune, who finds him work at a nearby factory and a place to stay.  At a sake-house, Kihachi encounters a young woman, Otaka, whom he met earlier when he was jobless.  He is shocked to see her employed as a waitress, but she insists she needs the money desperately to pay for medical treatment for her sick daughter.  Unable to allow Otaka to disgrace herself in this way, Kihachi decides to steal the money she needs...