This film is a great surprise. Apart from being thematically unusual (murder, suicide, corruption, capital punishment, rape, etc) it is visually astonishing and years ahead of its time, anticipating lots of stuff from 40's film noir to art-house European cinema (Bergman's Wild Strawberries for instance).
The film uses the `narratage' technique first used the same year by Preston Sturges in `The Power and the Glory' (also a very interesting film, directed by William K. Howard and a clear precedent of `Citizen Kane') which consists of voice-over narration and flashbacks and flashforwards, but if takes it much further with a very complex structure that includes flashbacks within flashbacks, dreams, hallucinations, flashforwards and characters appearing in scenes where they were not originally present and commenting the action with the main character.
The film is also extraordinarily shot with quasi expressionistic photography, lots of tracking shots, montages and very imaginative use of stock footage. To make all this even more admirable the film was produced on a very low B budget and it runs only 65 minutes.