Ernest Thorp | Nil Desperandum / c. 1949-1951

a rediscovered treasure

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ernest Thorp (director) Nil Desperandum / c. 1949-1951

 

In his seminal essay on the films of South African director Ernest Thorp, “Redefining the Historical Timeline of Queer Film in South Africa: Ernest Thorp’s Nil Desperandum and South Africa’s First Queer Films,” scholar Ludwig Wagner, establishes the likely date of Thorp’s film, long thought to have been released in the 1960s, as having to have been shot in the late 1940s or early 1950s due to several facts: the car used by the major hero of the story “resembles a 1948 Pontiac Silver Streak Streamliner. The “film also contains a shot of the HMS Jutland in Durban harbour, the battle-class destroyer with which Thorp returned to South Africa in 1948.” Moreover, Wagner argues, the sailors wore World War II-style Royal Navy uniforms, which the apartheid government replaced in 1952.”

     But even more conclusive is the South African GALA’s archives which included a conversation between one of Thorp’s younger mentors, Graeme Reid interviewed by Joe Garmeson, as they turn the pages of Thorp’s photograph album: a picture from 1951 in which Reid alludes to two films being shot that day:

“Ah, this is the one I told you about in Jameson Park. You see, you remember when we were talking about it, and I told you this film was made. Now, there is André, looking for all the world like a concierge; you must admit, it’s perfect. And then we did a separate little film in which he was a witch. I think he must have taken his teeth out, looking like that. What else happened in that film? I can’t remember, but these two look like nice faded middle-aged ladies; this one particularly could have been a landlady somehow or other, and this is a typical example of what I think happens when when gay boys dress up as women. They look glorious in masculine attire, but when they put drag on, they look like the most hard-faced bitch you can imagine.”

     “Reid asks whether the “[Jameson Park] film was made as a riposte to a previous film,” to which Garmeson responds: “Oh yes, yes, that was a colour film that was made by my mentor as a matter of fact […] and as you say, this [Jameson Park film] was I think more or less the kind of ‘I can do this too’ sort of thing.” Garmeson then describes the earlier film made by his “mentor.” The narrative matches Nil Desperandum perfectly:

 

“[It] was a play on navy, using naval uniforms, but not anybody in the navy. And it was a mimed encounter in effect of some gay boys with some navy and how they went into some park and had a party, and eventually, they all got beaten up and were shown staggering off with beautifully painted bruises all over.”

 

    As I wrote in my essay about his later film, Faux Pas de Beaux: Little is known about Thorp (1911-1998) except what we learn from the revelatory essay by Ludwig Wagner “Redefining the Historical Timeline of Queer Film in South Africa: Ernest Thorp’s Nil Desperandum and South Africa’s First Queer Films,” noting that Thorp’s father Herbert founded the Durban Amateur Photographic Society (1921) and that Thorp himself was the curator of the Durban Botanic Gardens from 1950-1975. But he also had a great many international friends and connections, including a significant number of mentors and friendship with Noel Coward and others. His most important film was this one, Nil Desperandum, a true wonder given that in the apartheid government in which he lived he might have been arrested and imprisoned for producing such a work. But his work was definitely private, shared only with a small, like-minded coterie of men.

    Instead of me recreating the entire plot once again, this time I’m going to rely mostly on Wagner:

“Nil Desperandum is a short silent film with a dense and meaningful narrative packed into six minutes. It tells the story of two camp men cruising for sailors at the Durban harbour. As the opening credits roll, one of the men is introduced as Mipsie, “the grand old lady of the screen,” who has a penchant for wearing women’s underwear. The other is a significantly younger man, whom the narrative suggests is being mentored by Mipsie. On their way to the harbour, they pass two camp sailors in their vehicle and stop to talk to them. Perhaps they are asking for directions, but more likely cruising. At the docks, they come across two butch sailors whom they pick up and drive to a secluded spot in the countryside for a picnic. After some drinking and flirting, Mipsie collapses into the lap of one of the sailors. A cut focuses on the aftermath of the picnic before the camera pans up and focuses on a large bush. Another cut shows clothes and underwear strewn across the branches, blowing in the wind before the disheveled sailors appear from inside the bush, one by one. The mise en scène irrefutably implies that the men have just had sex with Mipsie and the young man.”

     Although Wagner claims he has been unable to identify the sexual identity of Mipsie, I think we can quite safely say that she is transexual, not transgender, even though she prefers wearing women’s undergarments.

     They have surely encouraged the young sailors to engage in sex, placing out a blanket and making sure, certainly in Mipsie’s case, that she literally falls into the lap of the attending sailor. There is little question that they have picked up these sailors precisely for sex, particularly when they both strip of into their underwear.

    But it does not end well as we see Mipsie and her companion emerge from the bush. In what appears to be an act of latent homophobia, the two sailors and beaten them and afterwards, rob them of their car. Wagner continues: “They stagger back to the city, carrying only their picnic basket and blanket. On reaching the city’s outskirts, they are passed by a rickshaw that just happens to be carrying the two camp sailors they met earlier. Mipsie and his younger companion are offered a ride home. Each sitting on a sailor’s lap, nursing their bruised faces, the rickshaw  carrying the four men disappears down the road.”

 

   We can only imagine that this might lead to yet another new adventure, since the men have been thoroughly devasted by their sexual event. Besides, the new sailors seem more than a little attentive.

    Such totally open sexuality was not only unheard of in any studio films of the late 1940s and early 1950s, but is even more unthinkable given the world in which these “home” movies were filmed. Their remarkable discovery gives us a new vision of the time, helping us not only to recognize the fact that queer people existed—we already know that from what else was going on—but were willing to document and record their own fantasies, even while having to remain highly closeted and protected given the societies is which they existed.

   It is not that Thorp’s cinematic endeavors were so brave, although they were—after all they were kept a secret among only his closest friends—but that we still have them intact to tell us how those fantasies were imagined is invaluable.

    Many more such films surely remain to be discovered and perhaps even more have been lost. But that they existed is truly amazing. Men and women kept filming themselves, despite their obvious differences from the society around them, delighting in the very exceptionalness and sometimes absurdities of their own lives.

 

Los Angeles, November 5, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (November 2026).