Greenes Please don't spend money on this.

SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Prismark10 Hotel Reserve could had been a great wartime thriller under the hands of a better director with a more polished script.Set in 1938, James Mason is Peter Vadassy who staying at the Hotel Reserve in the south of France. He is a medical student, teaches languages to make ends meet and likes taking photographs as a hobby.He was born in Austria but has resided in France and hopes to be naturalised soon as a French citizen. He plans to be working as a doctor soon.Vadassy is suddenly arrested and accused of being a German spy. The photos he sent to be developed had photos of military installations. Luckily for Vadassy the authorities know he is innocent and his camera was mistakenly switched. They plan to use him as a decoy to flush out the real spy that is staying at the hotel. Vadassy has no option but to go along with the plan and turns detective when he returns to the hotel.It is nice to see a breezy performance from Mason who so often used to appear as brooding. However the film becomes too plodding as it really was a propaganda B movie made in 1944. He needed to be paired up with a strong female character that really does not happen here.

writers_reign A pretty feeble attempt at a cross between the innocent man wrongly suspected and a conventional 'one-of-these-ten-people-is-a-spy/killer-both' genres that fails to work as either. James Mason rarely turned in even a mediocre performance and it's worth sitting through this just for him. Herbert Lom and Patricia Medina are totally mis-matched and not for one second believable as a honeymoon couple. For a leading actress in the Berlin Theatre Lucie Mannheim is almost solid mahogany and is perhaps of more interest as the real life wife of Marius Goring, likewise we care more about Patricia Medina as the real life wife of Joseph Cotton, himself no stranger to this genre (Journey Into Fear, The Third Man). What we're left with is a sort of French Without Tears without the laughs - or the writing chops of Terry Rattigan.

blanche-2 James Mason is a guest at the "Hotel Reserve," and runs into some problems in this 1944 film. He plays a young man, Vadassy, whose camera is used to photograph a military installation, which is the crime of espionage. Since the camera number on his declarations form doesn't match the camera's, the officials know the camera was switched. They want Vadassay to find the spy in the hotel. The suspects are a honeymooning couple (Herbert Lom and Patricia Medina), a man using an alias (Frederick Valk), an attractive young woman (Mary Skelton), a major (Anthony Shaw), an older couple, several others.I liked this film a little better than some others on the board, though it does not have the suspense or urgency of a Hitchcock film. It does have an overpowering score, one of the most dramatic I've ever heard by Lennox Berkeley, interesting photography by Mutz Greenbaum (who was one of the directors as Max Greene), and it's based on a story by Eric Ambler, a fine suspense writer. What it also had going for it was a very European setting and sensibility, very fitting for the plot.James Mason is very young and handsome here, and Herbert Lom is nearly unrecognizable, he's so young. Mason is very good but the depth of his abilities was as yet untapped. The rest of the cast is good.Yes, Hitchcock would have gone to town on this one. Still, "Hotel Reserve" has its good points in storyline and visuals. And that music - intrusive but good.

Chris Gaskin Hotel Reserve is an interesting little thriller set before World War 2 and I taped this when BBC2 screened it one afternoon.A medical student on holiday in France is arrested for spying when some photos are developed showing something to do with the Army or Navy. To clear is name, the police release him and he has to find the actual person who took these with his camera. It has to be on of his fellow guests at Hotel Reserve...The cast includes James Mason and Herbert Lom, both of whom went on to play Captain Nemo, Mason in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Lom in Mysterious Island. With Patricia Medina.Hotel Reserve is quite a tense movie and is worth catching.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.