hyped garbage

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Recently re-watching the enjoyable Gris title A Touch of Larceny,I started looking for other easy-going Gris/Thrillers starring James Mason.Whilst searching round,I found that the BBC were showing a Thriller with Mason,which led to me reserving a viewing.The plot:Seeing war on the horizon in 1938, Peter Vadassy decides to apply for French citizenship,whilst going on a photographing holiday and staying at the remote Hotel Reserve. Going to collect his latest photos,Vadassy is gripped a spy who says photos of French military installations have been found on his camera. Taking a closer look,Vadassy discovers that a fellow guest has secretly switched his camera. Freed,Vadassy is told he must find out who took the photos,at the Hotel Reserve. View on the film:Taking not one,but three directors to make (!),the mix of the trio leads to a constantly unsettled changing of tone. Put together by editor Sidney Stone,the film darts between a murky Spiv tale and a jet-set Thriller abrasively, with it going from stylishly low shadows and seeping steam,to the light-Thriller sunny outdoors with no shading of dour darkness intact. Being the main person who almost keeps things together, Lennox Berkeley delivers an excellent score, (he sadly only did 4 scores) which pounds on the anxiety and unease of Vadassy's secret mission.Going into the hotel from Eric Ambler's book Epitaph For A Spy, John Davenport (who was literary editor of "The Observer newspaper) casts an eye on espionage in tense exchanges between Vadassy and his fellow guests at the hotel,with the clipped exchanges between them all signalling hidden secrets. Finishing Vadassy's mission with a twist that would later be used in a large number of Gialli, Davenport cleverly makes the twist work by having Vadassy casually build the wrong impression in swift asides. Joined by a simmering Herbert Lom and elegant Patricia Medina as Andre and Odette,James Mason gives a terrific,dashing performance as Vadassy,who spies on the hotel reserves.

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.

HOTEL RESERVE is a film that hasn't dated very well since its release during WW2; I'm guessing wartime audiences would have had a more emotional reaction to the storyline. It's a spy mystery set in and around a hotel in France in the years immediately preceding WW2, and the erstwhile hero of the piece is a young and breezy James Mason, who's wrongly accused of being a spy and who is then blackmailed into figuring out which of the suspects staying at the hotel is the real Nazi.Despite the intriguing set-up with its shades of Agatha Christie, this is largely a slice of hokum that goes nowhere. The running time feels at least twice as long as it actually is, and in terms of action, suspense and danger there's virtually zero to be found here. The director can just about muster up a relatively suspenseful scene at the climax, but up until that point the viewer is treated to endless scenes of talking, quasi-romance, and general boredom.Mason is an able actor but he has little to do in his central role, a role which offers little depth for any actor. Herbert Lom is better as one of the suspects, as he's able to bring his trademark darkness to the part, but the rest of the cast seems to be populated by caricatures instead of real people. There's not much here at all for modern audiences to engage with.

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.