We open with a row of black smokestacks belching fire. The sky is almost totally black, and one has the impression that the city, which is far down below and has lights like stars stuck in tar, hasn’t seen the sun in a century or more. Suddenly, a bolt of smog lightning. After the rumble, other fireballs rise and roar as a flying car approaches and buzzes by. It’s heading to two massive pyramids in the distance that project columns of light into the night. The pyramids, which look Mayan, are the color of a dying day, and have thousands of cascading office windows. Do people actually work here, or even live in this industrial megalopolis, whose factories dwarf William Blake’s “Satanic mills”?

This is one of the greatest opening scenes in the history of cinema. The movie is, of course, Blad

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