Le bord de la rivière

The River's Edge is directed by Allan Dwan and adapted to screenplay by James Leicester from the story "The Highest Mountain" written by Harold Jacob Smith. It stars Ray Milland, Anthony Quinn and Debra Paget. A CinemaScope production with colour by De Luxe, music is by Louis Forbes and cinematography by Harold Lipstein.

Ben Cameron (Quinn) and his wife Meg (Paget) are struggling to make their New Mexico ranch function as a happy working home. Enter shifty Nardo Denning (Milland), who has a past with Meg and has ulterior motives for suddenly appearing on the scene…

"You know, if you were on a desert island with that guy and there was nothing but rocks, pretty soon he would have all the rocks moved to his side of the beach"

Falling somewhere in the void between Noir and Western, The River's Edge is a delightfully sly and compact thriller that also boasts gorgeous location photography and splendidly garish colour compositions.

It was kill or be killed all the way down to The River's Edge!

Narratively it's a straight case of two men and one girl who wind up on the lam, with the foxy gal bouncing back and forth between the two men's affections like a ping-pong ball on legs. All three characters are flawed, their means and motivations deliberately scratchy, it makes for a near kinky noir love triangle, with dialogue that's often cynical or deliberately obtuse. The two guys are polar opposites, Denning is a spiv like manipulator, a dastard, Cameron is muscular but sincere, while Meg, with her shock of red hair scorching the landscape, has a murky past and is either confused or playing the cards close to her chest? Something is going to have to give...

In the mix is violence, potent violence at that, a suitcase full of cash and the perils of the terrain that the trio traverse. It's with the latter where Dwan and Lipstein come to the fore, the Scope photography and framing of characters amongst the Mexican locales (Cuernavaca, Morelos), really belies the B budget afforded the production. Were it not for some cheap looking studio interior shots-the remarkable recovery of one character after an accident-and a twist in the ending that should have gone the other way, this would be better thought of than just being considered a B movie culter.

Neon pinks and grubby greens mingle with shady grey characters for a whole bunch of fun. 7.5/10

Fox's Region 1 DVD features a very decent print and a detailed commentary track by noir aficionados James Ursini and Alain Silver.

Not a western but a well shot and performed drama set in the West. The story is rather ordinary but benefits from the role reversal of Ray Milland, usually the hero and Anthony Quinn, often the heavy but in opposite roles here. Even at the relatively brief running time the script could have been tightened a bit but overall a good film. One caveat-it would take a great deal to make a woman as stunning as Debra Paget was in her prime look bad but the filmmakers almost achieve that feat. Saddled with unflattering makeup and frightening Lucille Ball red hair that never moves no matter what travail she is enduring her beauty is almost completely obscured.

Debra Paget is walking out on Anthony Quinn and his miserable ranch. Between the scorpions in her shoes, mud in the water tank, and her throwing out the calf medicine that cost $11, she doesn't see any chance. Up drives Ray Milland in a pink Continental convertible. He's just conned someone out of a million dollars in cash, and he wants to hire Quinn to get him across the border to Mexico so he won't have to explain ten thousand $100 bills. He also wants Miss Paget, his old girl friend, who's still in love with him.

Allan Dwan's 132nd feature movie -- he also directed 272 short subjects -- is a fine little morality play, with the performers giving him, as they so often did, excellent performances. The subtext is, alas, too close to the surface to offer much subtlety, as it so often was in his last decade of directing, but the way he shoots the Mexican mountains harks back to his earliest shorts, when he showed his talent for making the landscape part of his story.

Excepting Debra Paget's gams, this foray into film is utterly legless. Mistitled and--in Ray Milland's case--miscast, the simple-minded, sometimes illogical story schlepps along so listlessly that viewers might well wish for a protagonist's demise just to end the misery! The derelict direction employs gratuitous scenes of Paget enveloped in tamely titillating beach towels, a bubble bath, and a cleavageless slip. She carries it all off as best she can and is actually credible as an ex-con in a marriage of convenience. Anthony Quinn, whose role was probably intended as a dumb-ox rancher, exudes such sexuality and smarts that the city gal/country guy dichotomy seems not so dubious. Middle-aged Milland, however, as a hot property Paget cannot resist, pulls the rug out from the whole plot. He moves through the movie like a somnambulist--and can scarcely be scolded for doing so!

Those who think of Ray Milland as a skilled light comedian or an amiable drunk will be surprised by his work in this late Allan Dwan entry. He's mean as can be in this one, and the best thing in the movie, making Anthony Quinn look weak by comparison; not an easy thing to do, but Ray pulls it off with style. Debra Paget is an asset as well in this trim, modest film.