This 1929 U.S. film is probably not a source for the groundbreaking 1950 movie classic Rashomon, because the 2 Japanese short stories which Rashomon is based upon were written in 1915 and 1922, while Thru Different Eyes came out in 1929, and was based upon a prior U.S. stage play. The writer of the short stories, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, killed himself in 1927. His style was highly influential in Japan, and he's considered the father of the modern Japanese short story, comparable to Edgar Allen Poe's influence in English literature, and of a similarly dark nature. Several of Akutagawa's other stories were made into films in the U.S. and Japan. Rashomon director Akira Kurosawa combined Akutagawa's 2 unrelated short stories in Kurosawa's film, which first brought Japanese cinema to world acclaim.
David Stevens