An Inn in Tokyo is a dark but beautiful film about looking for work and love in pre-war Japan, made as a silent film because Ozu did not yet trust the technology of sound recording (Chaplin was the only American director who was not yet using sound in 1935). Kihachi (Takeshi Sakamoto) is looking for work in a wasteland of factories and not finding it, as his two young sons accompany him in his search. Eventually they run out of money and have to choose between dinner and an inn and end up in the rain with no place to stay. Fortunately Takeshi runs into an old female friend, Otsune (Choko Iida) who at that point loans him money and helps him find a job. Meanwhile Kihachi has met Kumiko (Kazako Ojima) and her young daughter. Kihachi convinces Kumiko to give up her job as a "hostess" and when Kumiko's daughter gets sick Kihachi steals money to pay the hospital bills and turns himself into the police, asking Otsune to take care of his two sons.
An Inn in Tokyo, like all of Ozu's film, is low-key but intensely emotional. In his sound films, e.g. Tokyo Story (1953), Ozu does not move the camera at all but in 1935 there are still a few tracking shots and a few of the "pillow shots" (quiet shots of trains, laundry drying, etc. with no people in sight) that become more extensive later, offering a brief interlude between emotional scenes. Although Ozu almost always dealt with relationships within families An Inn is Tokyo is considerably more pessimistic than his post-war films.
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