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.

I overall found Hotel Reserve to be a good movie, albeit not a great one. There are some very tense and thrilling moments such as the climb to the roof top at the end, but some of the story does drag a bit and does feel thin at times, the script could have been tighter and Patricia Medina and Lucie Mannheim have little to do and are rather bland on the whole. Conversely, James Mason and Herbert Lom are very good in roles that I think are perfect for them, the film with nice cinematography, camera angles and production values is well made, the film is competently directed and the music is brooding and atmospheric. All in all, a good movie but part of me felt it could have been better. 7/10 Bethany Cox

A small number of people are resident at the "Hotel Reserve" which is meant to be in France but is clearly on a studio set. It is up to one of the residents, Peter Vadassy (James Mason) to find out which guest is a Nazi spy. The cast are split into 2 groups. First of all, there are the good actors who portray interesting characters - Emil Schimler (Frederick Valk) - bad/good guy with a secret?, the female hotel owner - bad/good girl?, Andrew Roux (Herbert Lom) - bad/innocent guy? and the main police inspector - a good guy that knows more than the audience/James Mason. Set against this are the rest of the cast who are all buffoons, especially the Major (Anthony Shaw) and the fisherman (David Ward) who play their roles for laughs and who are never funny. There is also a pointless role for a French policeman who follows Vadassey around and he plays for humour. He is also not funny...............a mention must also go to Lucie Mannheim as the romantic interest for James Mason. She is dreadful and it is criminal that she is second-billed in this film. Neither her air-time nor her acting skills merit this lofty position. James Mason is OK and the film is a time-passer. Nothing more.

James Mason is as pale as the script in this forties "thriller" that looks like it was performed and directed by a community theatre group. Mason is poorly miscast as a Austrian medical student accused of espionage while on vacation at a resort hotel in the south of France. The police threaten to turn him over to the Gestapo if he doesn't cooperate by uncovering the real spy among the hotel guests. With a group of arch characters, some casting sinister side glances, others acting buffoonish, a suspenseless game of Clue commences. In comparison the board game is more animated.With the exception of Herbert Lom's fine sinister turn performances run from bad to ham to invisible. The set design is sparse, the lighting unimaginative and the photography flat. The editing is glaringly incompetent and the direction (three are given credit; talk about too many cooks) haphazard.In an attempt to amp up the tension and showcase their matinée idol, the directors throw a trench coat on the pallid Mason and bring him along to vanquish the villain at the film's climax. It is a ridiculously contrived ending that in a way is wholly appropriate to a film that remains consistently bad from start to finish.