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Das Schwarze Schaf
The Black Sheep
West Germany 1960
produced by Utz Utermann, Claus Hardt (executive) for Bavaria Filmkunst
directed by Helmut Ashley
starring Heinz Rühmann, Karl Schönböck, Maria Sebaldt, Siegfried Lowitz, Lina Carstens, Fritz Rasp, Herbert Tiede, Friedrich Domin, Hans Leibelt, Rosel Schäfer, Gernot Duda, Herta Fahrenkrog, Wolf Peterson, Johannes Buzalski, Kathatina Herberg, Hans Dieter Jendreyko, T.P.McKenna
screenplay by István Békeffy, Hans Jacoby, based on stories by G.K.Chesterton, music by Martin Böttcher
Father Brown, Father Brown (Heinz Rühmann)
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Father Brown (Heinz Rühmann) has just been moved to another parish for
meddling in a murder mystery (and finding the murderer single-handedly)
when he stumbles over another corpse, that of an influencial banker (Hans
Leibelt), and almost against his own will, Brown starts investigating
again, and finds out the dead man had vital information about seemingly
worthless stocks the killer wanted to cheat Lord Kingsley (Fritz Rasp) out
of ... and he succeeded too. Thing is, whoever cheated Kingsley out of his
stock seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth - until Father
Brown figures it must have been Scarletti (Karl Schönböck), dead
director and leading man of a travelling theatre group that has just hit
town. Problem is, Scarletti has an alibi for both the murder and the
stealing of the stocks, and the alibi is Father Brown himself. Then though
Scarletti turns up dead, shot on stage, and the key suspects of the murder
are Flambeau (Siegfried Lowitz), a reformed criminal Brown himself asked
to search Scarletti's dressing room, and Kingsley, who has long figured
out Scarletti has tricked him and has come to the theatre with the intent
to killhim - but has only shot his own mirror image, it turns out. After a
bit of to and fro it turns out that Scarletti wasn't shot at all but his
twin brother whom Scarletti used as a perfect alibi in all his crooked
deals. But when the twin got too greedy, Scarletti decided it was time to
shoot him too. Of course, it is Brown who's the first one to figure that
out, and it's Brown who has a showdown with Scarletti (where he's saed by
the police only in the very last second) - and as a thank you for his
meddling, he is moved to yet another parish ... Rather weak krimi
(= German crime movie) that takes an awful long time (about a third of its
running time) to even start its main narrative, and when it does, it's
ridiculously far-fetched and riddled with leaps of reason. Plus, the movie
as a whole is way too nice to ever create anything remotely
resembling suspense, while Heinz Rühmann's performance as the
crime-solving priest lacks any eccentrricity the role calls for. All this
makes up not exactly for a bad film, rather a boring one.
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