In his essay "No Way Out: Existential Motifs in the Film Noir" from 1976 (posted to BBL), Robert G. Porfirio defines "Existentialism" as "an outlook which begins with a disoriented individual facing a confused world that he cannot accept. It places emphasis on man's contingency in a world where there are no transcendental values or moral absolutes, a world devoid of any meaning but the one man himself creates" (213, emphasis added). Porfirio then goes on to expand upon seven such hypothetical thematic motifs detectable in the cinema come to be known as "film noir":
1. The Non-Heroic Hero;
2. Alienation and Loneliness;
3. Existential Choice;
4. Man Under Sentence of Death;
5. Meaningless¬ness, Purposelessness, the Absurd;
6. Chaos, Violence, Paranoia; and,
7. Sanctuary, Ritual and Order.
Within the space of six (6) double-spaced typed pages (12-point font with 1-inch margins, please), choose only three (3) of Porfirio's hypothetical "motifs." After elaborating upon each motif further by linking it to some of the critical theories we have been examining closely in our Film Studies class focussed on the American film canon of director Fritz Lang (eg., Schrader, Savran, Mul-vey, Freud, Williams, Neale, Copjec, et al), conclude by illustrating how the motif might apply to one or two films discussed in the course's first half, making sure that your entire 6-page com¬mentary covers at least four "noir" narratives of the four films and one novel studied thus far this term. For purposes of organization, you might want to devote 2-pages of commentary to each of the three motifs you select for expansion and illustration.