Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s updated adaptation (1970) of a 1929 play by Marieluise Fleisser that Bertolt Brecht is said to have liked; it’s about the relationships between women in a provincial German town and soldiers who are building a wooden bridge. As elsewhere in his work, Fassbinder’s simplicity in framing the action is often a tonic, but the lip-smacking depictions of cruelty remain as problematic as ever. With Hanna Schygulla, Irm Hermann, Harry Baer, and Gunther Kaufmann. (JR)