Mr Sin - The Abe Saffron Story (ATOM Study Guide)

This is a story of bribery, blackmail and corruption that examines how Australia's enigmatic crime boss, Abe Saffron, operating from the 1940s through to the 1980s remained untouchable for so long. Before the Melbourne gangland wars of the nineties, before Underbelly, Abe Saffron was running a complex crime empire from Sydney. He pioneered the business model for organised crime in Australia. For thirty years, his influence reached to the very top of the tree. This is a social history of a city and tells the story of a quietly spoken man whose tools of trade – blackmail, corruption and bribery – enabled him to be the number one crime boss in Australia. The film provides revelations about who Abe Saffron was, what he did and who he did it to through interviews with journalists, policemen, politicians and family members.

Curriculum Relevance

Mr Sin – The Abe Saffron Story would be suitable for middle to senior secondary students and tertiary students in the following subject areas: Legal Studies, Studies of Society (contemporary Australian studies), Criminology, Psychology, Values Education and Film and Media Studies. For students interested in the sociology of crime and how criminals are able to operate within a society, this documentary has much to offer. For students of Film and Media Studies it is an interesting example of the challenges involved in piecing together a filmed portrait of an individual, using archival material and interviews with a number of individuals who are each able to tell part of the Abe Saffron story.