Crash

Crash

As the founders of Dutch aviation, idealist Albert Plesman and opportunist Anthony Fokker, are inextricably bound together. They cannot live with each other or without. Nevertheless, during the Interwar Period when the world is heading towards a new war, they join forces to set up civil aviation in the Netherlands.

October 1929 – April 1930

The stock market crash of October ’29 sees the official end of the roaring twenties and the beginning of the turbulent thirties. Albert Plesman must work harder than ever to keep his KLM above water. This is at his family’s expense and Suze Plesman isn’t happy. Where she used to form a team with her husband, she now seems to have less contact with him every day. When the wife of a KLM pilot comes to settle a score with Suze about Plesman’s refusal to recognise the new pilots’ union, she realises that she has no idea what’s going on in her husband’s life.

In America, Fokker has his own problems due to the crisis. He must travel the country to keep his new factories running as orders are being massively cancelled. Moreover, General Motors’ management is shocked by the technical backlog of the Fokker factories and he is threatened with being expelled from his own company. During each of those trips, Fokker is accompanied by his new wife, Violet Austman-Fokker. She wants to stay close to her husband, but her own disposition suffers greatly from the stress and constant travel. The vibrant, young woman who Fokker came to know is a shadow of her former self. In the end, Violet is admitted into a sanatorium with a total mental and physical breakdown.

Meanwhile, Suze is finally taking matters back into her own hands. She invites all the pilots and their spouses to dinner without consulting her husband and forces him to discuss his problems in public that evening. Her tactic is successful: under pressure from their wives, the pilots and Plesman arrive at a compromise. During the evening, Plesman realises that he’s neglected Suze for far too long and he promises her that things will get better.

In New York, Violet returns to their apartment after a long stay in the sanatorium. Fokker arrives home late that night and is so perturbed by the problems in his factory, that he doesn’t give Violet the time of day. His self-centeredness becomes too much for her. While Fokker sleeps, Violet throws herself out of their bedroom window on the fifteenth floors.

After Violet’s death, Fokker is distraught for months. He barely notices that he’s losing his own factory since he only feels grief and enormous guilt about the death of the love of his life.