“The Single Standard has a development which later would betray the ironic freedom of its beginning, and its title: Garbo falls back to the more classic standard, renouncing passion without being consumed by it and accepting her role of a less tragic and more sombre Karenina. This clumsy difference between the beginning and the outcome of the plot is probably due to censorship reasons, and maybe Richard Corliss is right when he says that in the moment when Garbo must choose between running away with her lover, who after jilting her has now come back, and remaining with her husband and child, in reality the choice is made by Hays. But as always, even in a poor and unstable framework, Garbo is capable of seizing some memorable moments for herself. There is a new desolation, composed also of fury and dark disbelief, in her reaction to the blurred Nils Asther announcing her, without any reason, that their relationship, although very pleasing, must now come to a halt; there is a palpable anxiety in her wandering heart-broken in the yacht cabin, while the camera stays still and follows her movements. Most of all, we retain in our memory, and we are moved by the outdoor scene at see, under the sun, when she is in the arms of the man she loves, and she has not yet to pay her dues: they are moving because they are the last images of erotic freedom to which Garbo would have access to, before her last silent movie, and before the more stylised, asexual movies of the thirties”.

Paola Cristalli, Cinegrafie, n. 10, 1997.

“The illusion that slender, ephebic Nils Asther could become another romantic hero on the big screen last just a brief moment. Although he displayed refined elegance, not devoid of a subtle hint of perfidy (let us just recall the following film, The Bitter Tea of General Yen), he was soon cast in the role of the “bad guy” in growingly minor features”.

Vittorio Martinelli