An Inn In Tokyo (1935)

Underneath what has already been established about the origins of neo-realism, lies a deeper and more expansive story. If you read the stories about the origins of neo-realism you will undoubtedly come across the story of Jean Renoir’s “Toni” – described as a “precursor” to neo-realism – filmed on location in Martigues, Bouche du Rhône in France in 1935 and how Luchino Visconti was one of the assistant directors. Renoir would later give Visconti a copy of James M Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Visconti’s version (“Ossessione,” 1943) would launch what would become known as the Italian Neo-Realist movement.

One oddity of film history is that Italian film critics used the term “neo-realist” in 1943 and 1945 to describe the French films of the 1930s. In Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present, Peter Bondanella doesn’t explicitly link the term to the film noirs derided by the French rightwing. The context does make it clear that that is what it means and he goes on to add that one of the critics would “become Italy’s leading Marxist film historian” and editor of Cinema nuovo.

In this history it would also seem odd that another film considered a “precursor” to neo-realism would be Yasujiro Ozu’s “An Inn In Tokyo” filmed in 1935 in Japan and one of the last of Ozu’s silent films. One difficulty in tracing the influence of the East Asian films is that there aren’t reliable records showing what played when and where. (Determining whether Ozu’s film had Japanese precedents is also extremely difficult to nail down.)

Co-written as well as directed by Ozu, the story of a man and his two young sons unfolds in an industrial wasteland where work and money are in short supply. They enter the film as they walk along a road and then live off the bounty offered for stray dogs. They meet up with a woman with a young daughter and it is that daughter’s predicament that will lead to a crime being committed and the father forced to abandon his children.

As with Vittorio De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves,” choices are made and regretted although the ending of “An Inn in Tokyo” is far more disastrous.

Ozu was not alone in producing neo-realist films in East Asia. In China, there are several examples, among what are known as The Leftist Films.