Compared to Walsh, Dwan’s work is less lucid yet more tender, less wide-reaching but more intimate; it stands out, above all, for its nobility and generosity. In contrast to Walsh’s piercing gaze Dwan offers us a refined gentleness. These qualities can be seen in The River’s Edge, in which a bandit (Ray Milland) forces a cowboy (Anthony Quinn) to guide him across the desert to the border. The two men are accompanied by Quinn’s wife (Debra Paget), who has abandoned her husband for Milland. It is, a priori, a game in which we have already seen the cards and know the outcome. But Dwan succeeds in winning it nevertheless, without cheating and without resorting to intellectual or aesthetic tricks. This same honesty is evident in the exemplary simplicity with which he directs the actors and in the mise-en-scène, which is based around the essentially moral decision to focus on moments of rest as opposed to dedicating itself to portrayal of violence. Several minutes of tenderness are no less worthy than the surges of lyricism of Griffith and De Mille.
Bertrand Tavernier, in “Cahiers du cinéma”, 149, 1963