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The Dance of Life was the fourth movie to be directed by John Cromwell, a theater director brought out to Hollywood with the advent of sound. He co-directed it with A. Edward Sutherland, whose forte was comedy, and the results were exceptionally good, if not spectacular. Cromwell moves the film along at an unexpectedly brisk pace for an early talkie, and the dialogue is extremely naturalistic, displaying none of the arch quality that afflicts many an early talkie drama. The dialogue and dramatic sequences hold up better than the dialogue scenes in MGM's Broadway Melody of 1929, and the portrayals are more realistic than a lot of the work in rival productions of the period. Additionally, there are some scenes involving highly mobile camera work that are totally unexpected in a movie of this vintage, coming out of a period in which the camera was often anchored to a single position. The Technicolor sequences seem to be lost to modern viewers, but worse than that, it's a pity that this movie has all-but-disappeared from distribution.