Critic Noel Burch has called An Inn at Tokyo "probably the masterpiece of Ozu's silent period," and Donald Richie, in his book, "Ozu," writes: "This beautifully observed film is among Ozu's most realistic. Indeed, the term 'neorealism' has been used to describe Ozu's establishing scenes of the effects of the Great Depression in Tokyo." The story is of an unemployed factory worker, Kihachi, who takes to the road with his two sons after he is abandoned by his wife. They find companionship with an equally destitute widow and her daughter. When the little girl becomes ill, Kihachi steals from an old friend to pay the hospital bill. Ozu, who continued to make silent films until 1936, has described his technique in An Inn at Tokyo: "Given the tendencies of the times, I couldn't do much with silent films. I couldn't avoid adopting talkie techniques to this silent. For example, I dared to insert the subtitles of A's dialogue into a close-up of B, who is listening to A" (in "Ozu on Ozu").