partner. As to whether or not he finds the killer and sends him or her to prison, that becomes a decision he makes on his own, without recourse to traditional law or social custom. In many ways, he is a law unto himself, following his own code of conduct and his own sense of morality.
The development of the character on film coincided with the era of the film noir, the dark film that saw the world through shifting perspectives, with the old certainties constantly in question and with man presented as doing his job in the face of death and an implacable fate. Ottoson says of the film noir:
The tone and mood of the film noir was overwhelmingly black, hence its name. The main protagonists of these films were usually people suffering from an existential angst. Life was conceived to be a hopeless proposition, with people having no control over their fates. Despair, alienation, disillusionment, moral ambiguity, pessimism, corruption, and psychoses carried the day. The film noir portr
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