1957 Directed by Allan Dwan
A murderous thief on the run with stolen loot forces a poor rancher to guide him across the desert into Mexico. Accompanying them is the rancher's wife, who happens to be the killer's former girlfriend.
Matar para Viver, Al borde del río, Le bord de la riviére, Flucht nach Mexiko, L'ultima riva, 애상, Corrientes traicioneras, 大河边缘
USANR
USA
“You’d rather have him dead than me alive?”
Director Allan Dwan goes all Anthony Mann (particularly The Naked Spur) in this western noir-in-color adventure melodrama. Meg (Debra Paget) is fresh out of Tehachapi, old flame Nardo (Ray Milland) is freshly recuperated from what he says was a car accident, and her husband Ben (Anthony Quinn) is very bad at ranching.
The men in the film are so bloated and sweaty and tanned like leather. I love it. Milland plays your typical noir sucker—he thinks he’s in control, until he isn’t. Quinn is almost a too loyal nice guy who is given several opportunities to murder Milland’s bad boy and end this whole kidnapping/on-the-lam/border crossing ordeal, but doesn’t (instead, he leaves…
Debra Paget wearing rolled up jorts, a flannel shirt, and furry pink kitten heel slippers while awkwardly trying to do farm chores is legendary
Grifos meus.
Não há, hoje em dia, em Lisboa, mais do que quatro pessoas (e eu conheço as outras três) que esta noite sairiam de casa para ver, numa sala de cinema, um filme de Allan Dwan. A menos que essa eventual projecção fosse patrocinada por uma qualquer autoridade cultural. Provavelmente, até houve gente a ver o extraordinário A Batalha de Iwo Jima um dia destes na Cinemateca. Mas é por ser na Cinemateca, não por ser de Dwan.
Não há, em Lisboa, mais do que quatro pessoas, não haverá muitas mais em Paris, como não haverá em mais sítio nenhum. E não é de hoje. Tirando o breve parêntese de todas as curiosidades que foram os anos 60, nunca…
Basically the movie equivalent to those 90s survival thrillers like The River Wild, or The Edge, that pretty much makes this Allan Dwan’s classic serving as their main template, just peppered with some Noir flair of dark pasts and corrupted morals; a romantic love triangle melodrama dwelling in the inability to change one for the better when human’s emotions is a treacherous maze of never rewarded feelings; and a Western-like brutal punch that provides the anamorphic cinemascope vistas a massive scope of threat that swallows our characters in a constant duel of wit in their survival journey amidst the arid landscape in a ever-present feel of merciless dread.
Where you’ll witness the titans battle between actors Ray Milland and Anthony…
I didn't think I would ever live to see it. But here it is. A movie where Anthony Quinn is even sexier than he is in The Ox-Box Incident. We did it Joe.
A Western Noir of signifying colors where treachery is green, morality is gray, red is blood, and Anthony Quinn is God.
Allan Dwan must have done every genre in every era during his absurdly long career. At the tail end, he tried a new one: Noir Western in Color. A taunt 87 minutes merges the Western tropes (imagistic panoramas, run-for-the-border) with Noir (snappy dialogue, poor decision-making).
The adventure plot offers no suspense. The poster is the spoiler, and the Deus ex máquina (thanks to a Mexican truck) is a lazy way to create a spectacular money-fluttering finale, which one-ups The Killing. All the suspense — and the reason the film is so compelling — comes from friction created by the constant psychological oscillation along the legs of their love triangle.
This would be fun to remake with Jude Law, Kirsten Dunst, and Jessie Plemmons
Favorite dialogue:
“I can’t believe your a natural-born fool. You must have trained for it.”
“What’s in the bag?” “A change of underwear.” “You must have problems.”
On things that must hurt, burnt money as a token of devotion. Quinn’s diligence, Paget’s weariness, and Milland’s eyes witnessing love, one of the greatest sequences. A true romantic film, pure cinema.
"What's in the bag?"
"Change of underwear."
"You must have problems."
Begins as a sort-of tug-o-war between Paget's disparate male saviors and what they value: Quinn's Ben a staunch man of the Earth versus Milland's Nardo as a man of ill-gotten means, the former offering her freedom, period while the latter offers her freedom from a life she's settled into that's a far cry from her days as a pampered thief's accomplice, their conflicting values, emotions and psychologies making for an intense, often overblown whirlwind of conflict. There's suspense aplenty in the collision between Meg's past and present selves, her desire for the ultimately loveless glitz peppering an unsavory past that won't save her from nature's indifference, thus necessitating her…
Cuando un día, de improviso, por casualidad, y con diez años de retraso, nos llega como una bendición una obra tan pura, tan sabia y tan serena como The River´s Edge, del anciano Allan Dwan, no recibe otra respuesta que el silencio o un injusto menosprecio.
El motivo de la pésima crítica que ha tenido en Madrid Al borde del río tiene su clara raíz en la impotencia del que ante una obra de tal simplicidad y pureza, de tan uniforme tonalidad (que no es lo mismo que atonalidad), de tan imperturbable respirar, sin nada que destaque sobre lo demás, en un prodigio de difícil equilibrio, no tiene nada a que agarrarse para decir algo sobre la película, y automáticamente…
I'm not sure how much I can sympathize with someone dumb enough to fall for Ray "Dial M For Murder" Milland, and I never got the sense that Anthony Quinn wasn't always in control of the situation, but otherwise this is a nice enough outdoors noir.
This is pulpy as hell, and Anthony Quinn is wonderful.
(I'm only just starting my Allan Dwan journey, but so far he's far more interesting than average directing bear.)
