Une auberge à Tokyo

This is a silent film by Ozu, and it is brilliant both in its simple telling of the story and its development of the characters. This film is about a father, Kihachi, who has two small sons and is looking for work, so they can eat. He meets a young mother with a daughter and for a while she is out of the film. Near the end of his rope, he runs into an old female friend, who finds work for him and enables the boys to go to school. The young mother has come to the town with her daughter and he looks to help her, but is also interested in her. As simple as this sounds, the film is wrought with emotion, and is brilliant in that your own thoughts could be somewhat mixed about this. Shouldn't he be more grateful to the (female) friend who helped him find work? One of Ozu's best qualities is to show sadness, happiness and fear in its most basic, raw forms. The acting, even by the children, is uniformly wonderful. Even Mr. Ryu, whom I believe to be one of the greatest if not the greatest character actors in film history, is in this film in a small role. Ozu's films are methodically slow moving mostly, this one included, but I have always felt that prospective film makers should study his work to understand the virtues of simplicity in telling a story on film. Up there with Ozu's best. Possibly not as good as "Tokyo Story" and "Late Spring" but very highly recommended.

This early great work from The Master is a sobering melodrama honed squarely on a single unemployed, homeless father struggling to feed and shelter his two sons. Ozu does a fine job capturing the dynamic between the two boys by themselves and with their father, but the film really gets interesting when two women enter the story: a young single mother, also homeless, and an old friend who finds the father a job. The maudlin climax seems to anticipate Ford's GRAPES OF WRATH and DeSican melodrama -- though in the wrong ways -- but prior to that Ozu comes up with an quirky expressionist sequence to reflect the father's unraveling moral state.

I would argue that "Tokyo no yado" (Inn at Tokyo) is not only one of Ozu's best films, but one of the best films by anyone ever. It tells the story of an unemployed and homeless single father (Takeshi Sakamoto) with two sons (the elder of the two being the wonderful Tomio Aoki) looking for work in depression-era Tokyo, whose lives intersects with those of a single mother (the marvelous Yoshiko Okada) of a little daughter likewise forlornly seeking a way (and a place) to live. The children can find moments of happiness in the undustrial wasteland -- and their parents can briefly recollect their own happiness as children. The boys have a brief idyll, after their father gets a job with the help of an old friend (Choko Iida), even getting to go to school (a pleasure they value almost as much as having a fixed home and a dependable supply of food). Things, however, become troubled again when the family loses track of the mother and girl (who have not found any "angel" to help them out). A film that is strikingly beautiful -- and more than a little heart-breaking. It is marred by a tiny section that seems overly melodramatic right before the end (but this might be due to infelicities of the intertitles -- or at least of their translation).

An Inn in Tokyo follows Kihachi, a nearly penniless, wandering laborer, as he and his two young sons, Zenko and Shoko, search through the industrial wastelands of Tokyo, hoping for any work to sustain them. For three days, their efforts are fruitless, leaving them weary and hungry. Along the way, they meet Otaka, a widowed mother with her own little girl, Kimiko. Similarly struggling, the two families form a bond, united by their hardship and loneliness in this desolate landscape.

Eventually, Kihachi encounters an old friend, Otsune, who runs a small café. She offers Kihachi a job, and for the first time in days, he finds a brief sense of relief and joy. However, Kihachi soon learns that Kimiko has fallen seriously ill with dysentery, leaving her mother unable to pay the hospital fees. Desperate to help, Kihachi attempts to borrow from Otsune, but when she cannot lend the money, he makes the painful choice to steal from a wealthy bar. He gives the stolen money to Otaka for her daughter's care, sacrificing his own freedom in the process.

In a poignant final act, Kihachi asks Otsune to care for his sons, then walks alone to the police station to surrender. His oldest son, aware of the sorrow weighing on his father, serves him an imaginary cup of sake, a brief and tender gesture of understanding that underlines the deep connection between them.

This was Ozu's penultimate silent film, and it serves as a precursor to Italian neorealism, blending stunning technical precision with a powerful exploration of human resilience. Set against the bleak, industrial sprawl of Tokyo, Ozu presents the heartbreaking plight of two lost adults and their children, highlighting social hardship while masterfully capturing fleeting moments of humor and humanity. The film's compassionate performances, especially by the children, enrich this landscape, imbuing it with life and depth.

This film deals with an unemployed man and his two sons who rover through the industrial areas of Tokyo during the depression in the search for work.

After some bad luck the father is able to find a job but then the pity for a single mother and her sick little daughter makes him do something he should not have done.

This is the very simple story but this is not what makes the film a masterpiece. The great achievement is that Ozu shows how poverty affects the human mind. He depicts the fear and the feeling of senselessness in a way that nobody else has ever done. Many of the devices him employs are very imaginative. Many people might compare this film to de Sica's "Ladri di biciclette" which was made 12 years later. But without doing a disservice to de Sica's masterpiece: "Tokyo no yado" is the best film that was ever made about poverty and unemployment,