SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

bkoganbing Garbo would soon be talking, but still in 1929 MGM was putting her in silent films as they searched for the right property for her. Still when Greta Garbo made The Single Standard her future in sound was still a subject for speculation.With her Swedish accent it wasn't sure how it would register in sound. But watching The Single Standard Nils Asther and Johnny Mack Brown also had accent issues. Asther was also from Sweden and he's probably best known in talkies for playing the title role of a Chinese general in The Bitter Tea Of General Yen. He slipped back into B pictures and less with sound.So to did Johnny Mack Brown. Brown was an All American from the Crimson Tide of Alabama and had an accent to match. He who was a leading man to Garbo and Mary Pickford among others quickly went into westerns and soon enough B westerns for his career. Silent films were a great leveler in casting. As long as you looked believable in the role, no speech limitations could hinder you.It's why Garbo is playing an American socialite who is bored with her life and doesn't see why she shouldn't go out and sow wild oats like the men do. The Single Standard should apply to all.So she dumps good old reliable Brown to have a fling with first her chauffeur and then artist/boxer Nils Asther. This was a character that had to have been borrowed from current middleweight champion Mickey Walker although Walker was fighting more than painting at this point of his career.Asther is one romantic dude for a prizefighter and even when she goes back to Brown and has a son by him, he's still someone she can't shake.Sharp eyed viewers will note the presence of future stars Joel McCrea and Robert Montgomery in the cast as a couple of debonair men about town. The Single Standard is not the best of Garbo silents though she gets her moments in. Best for her are scenes with her young son, a harbinger of what she does in Anna Karenina some years later.A must for Garbo fans, yet all of her films are.

MartinHafer This silent film finds Garbo playing a lady with rather bohemian morals for 1929. She sees that there is an unfair double-standard that allows men to cheat and have fun--but not women. So, she decides she, too, can play the field and ignore conventional morality--fair is fair. This is a novel idea and I agree that women and men should be equal--though instead, it might be nice if the men behaved a lot less randy--not women behaving slutty as well! But, that's really not the point of the film--at least not initially.Garbo meets an interesting man--a famous boxer AND painter (now THAT'S unusual!!). She is more than willing to bed this guy but he's off to explore the Amazon and tells her it wouldn't be right for her to come along with him. Why she then carries a torch for this guy is a bit hard to believe--they only spent a short time together AND if he was such a chauvinist that he didn't take her with him, why would she want him back later in the film--after she is married and has a child? Well, that is her plan--but, fortunately, but the end of the film she comes to her senses and her husband also does as well.Overall, an entertaining film but I take off at least a point because Garbo simply made too many 'woman with loose morals' pictures. Worth seeing, however, especially if you are a die-hard Garbo fiend.

Michael_Elliott Single Standard, The (1929) ** (out of 4)Outside of Greta Garbo, this silent film pretty much lives up to the "standard" mentioned in the title. In the film Garbo plays Arden Hewlett, a rich woman who believes that men and women should play by the same rules in terms of relationships. She doesn't have a problem with the boys running out on their wives and she expects the same. She eventually hooks up with a boxer (Nils Asther) but winds up with another man (Johnny Mack Brown) who she marries. Once married the boxer comes back into her life and wants her back. I'm sure this film was dated even by 1929 standards so it certainly doesn't play any better today. This isn't a horrible movie but at the same time everything in it is so bland that you can't help but be bored out of your mind. What's even worse is that the film lasts a short 73-minutes yet even that seems way too long. The only thing that really works here is the beauty of Garbo. She does a nice job in the role and she's easily believable as the "fun girl" every guy would want to be with. I thought Asther was also pretty good and what lively moments the film does have are due to the boat trip between his character and Garbo's. Brown isn't too bad but his role is so predictable that it comes off rather boring. Director Robertson really seems to be asleep at the wheel because there's no energy or life anywhere in the film. I'm not sure if the studio just made this production a quickie until they could find out what to do with Garbo and sound movies but in the end the film just doesn't work.

www-vitaphone-org Greta Garbo - the lesbian screen star - says farewell to silent movies with this interesting feature. The musical score - which was recorded in 1929 - is beautiful. Be sure to see it with the original Vitaphone score and not one of those cheap modern scores. (Many con-artists have someone tricked the public into believing that their cheap modern scores are somehow better because they are performed live - They couldn't reproduce the beautiful scores of the 1920's and early 1930's if they tried - you need to at least know how to read music to do that.)