In this rare, late silent, Greta Garbo plays a woman determined to make single the double standard which allows men to have sexual affairs and remain respectable, while denying women the same privilege. Arden Stuart (Garbo), San Francisco debutant, meets a pugilistic sailor-turned-artist (Nils Asther), and takes off with him on his yacht (the “All Alone”) for a prolonged affair. On her return, she is indeed alone, shunned by all save an old admirer, whom she marries. When the sailor returns, the attraction is still there, but it is for the sake of motherhood and decency that she sends him out of her life for good.
Male critics seemed to have relegated the plot to the stuff girls' dreams are made of, but, missing the ironic defeat of the film's message, remained bemused by the extent to which Garbo failed to play into the stuff of boys' dreams. Variety: “What some girls do today, and a lot more would like to, Greta Garbo does in The Single Standard.... (But) the actress is most unfeline in her brazen directness.... (C)ensors... will find no show, except a veiled peep at (her) garters... and her intimate postures are so frequent and so matter of fact....” (JB)