"Das schwarze Schaf" or "The Black Sheep" is a West German black-and-white movie from over 55 years ago. The star here is lead actor Heinz Rühmann and he also won a German Film Award for playing the main character here, a priest who keeps solving murder crimes. It runs for 90 minutes and is 90% crime story in my opinion. This is not a good thing as the plot twists and the story in general are just not good enough and not even Rühmann can make it work. I personally think Rühmann delivered his best during the years when this was made, but here the comedy is very limited and he cannot shine in that era as he usually does. Instead the film has a touch of Edgar Wallace attached to it, but is equally disappointing as most of the Wallace adaptations.This film here runs for 90 minutes exactly pretty much and its success resulted in a second film being made. Apart from that, Father Brown is a character who has appeared many times in films and especially series in the last decades. German audiences may know Ottfried Fischer's take on the story. But back to this one here. In order to let me recommend it, the crime-related stories should have been much better. I also did not like how basically everybody in this film were displayed as fools in order to make Rühmann's character look good and I personally did not like how Brown seemed fairly arrogant at times. This film lacks what made "Adelheid und ihre Mörder" for example a good watch. It just takes itself way too seriously and the solid solution and revelation about the murder at the end cannot make up for it either. I give this film a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

But it's entertainment any way. With that classy early cool jazz back ground Music. It takes place in Ireland. It seems Father brown has to solve mysteries . When one church member is found dead, With the aid of his house servant played by Lina Carsten,He stats cluing in only to discover that it was another member of the church. So the murderer is fighting the police, in an abandon place. Father brown shows up and begs him to stop. He ends up getting the murderer with the murders daughter , he got from a pub.The bishop is peed off with him about the publicity so he send him to another parish, He also has another problem . He has a model of a church that he wants to see built of his parish , but, no one will finance him cause he keeps moving.He ends s up going to another Parish, somewhere in Ireland, with a friend live there, who owns, a motel or hotel. He gets involved in another murderer with a theatrical troupe, in which Nazi surviving Carl Schonbock is a part of it. One of the associates , of the troupe , gets murdered. Fritz Rasp s up ,another survive, As Sir Kingley. Has something to do with the plot.Then Carl Shonbock gets murdered.Father brown only discovers that Schonbock had a twin brother. He murdered his other twin. End up getting killed himself. That solves the problem but makes Fathers problem worse .He gets kick out of another parish only to get on a ship of fools for America to solve a problem, Ha! Ha!ha! Ha! Ha! . This might not be the greatest early 60's classic of Germany,but, until Turner classic movies and Warner home video change the policies against showing any more actors that work under Hitler , to punish them, unless their films a international classic. Father brown is not.If you can find this it would be a good collectors film.If your like me into the golden age of German film making 1930 to 1960. The big corporates dictator are appeasing these political correctionist , who should be in prisoner kick out of the United states, for their continued wall street rating. You see a message is being sent out that films made before or during or right after The Nazis can't make money. You would not even see this film at wall mart or Fye. 08/13/11 3:45pm

Except the characters and the fact that it is a detective story, this movie has not much to do with the original father Brown. In fact this is a very German movie which is slightly based on Father Brown storiesIf you see this film without regard of the period/place it was made, you might find the storyline and acting terrible backdated. However: this movie fits perfectly in the German 60's era of somewhat fuzzy detective "thrillers" after stories of Edgar Alan Poe and other English writers. For that era I find "Das schwarze Schaf" and also the second father brown movie "Er kann's nicht lassen" better than average.The feeling of those movies (and especially the both Father Brown films) rely very much on the big-band jazz sound of Martin Boettcher, who was regularly asked to compose soundtracks during that period (later, Boettcher would compose the famous Winnetou soundtracks).As conclusion: Do not watch this movie if you want to see the Father Brown of the stories. Do not watch it if you hate backdated films. For all others it is an old but nice movie, typically for it's era.

Maybe I am spoiled by Alec Guiness as G.K Chesterton's creation Father Brown, but though Heinz Rühmann tries hard he does not make a very convincing one. Rühmann is not helped much by a so-so script that hardly captures the atmosphere, let alone the intelligent and complicated plots of the Chesterton's stories. Emphasis in this adaptation is very much on Father Brown himself rather than on a good detective story. It takes quite a while for this Father Brown to find out what solution to the murder case is; the viewer is way ahead of him.(5/10)Helmut Ashley's direction is only adequate, as is the cast, which all amounts to a very deathly film.