The 1958 film directed by Orson Welles that begins with a famous three-minute tracking shot is Touch of Evil.
This American film noir opens with an extended moving-camera shot in which a time bomb is planted in a car, the vehicle crosses the U.S.–Mexico border, and several characters move through the scene before the explosion. The shot lasts almost three and a half minutes and is designed as a single continuous movement, immediately establishing the film’s tense border-town atmosphere.
Welles directed and starred as Hank Quinlan, a corrupt and obsessive police captain. Charlton Heston plays Mexican investigator Miguel Vargas, with Janet Leigh, Joseph Calleia, Akim Tamiroff and Marlene Dietrich in supporting roles. The screenplay was loosely based on Whit Masterson’s 1956 novel Badge of Evil.
The film’s production was troubled by studio interference: Universal re-edited it and ordered additional scenes after Welles completed his work. In 1998, Walter Murch reconstructed a version guided by Welles’s detailed 58-page memo. Citizen Kane is another Welles landmark, but it does not begin with this tracking shot.