On Sidney Lumet (and other directors)

I’m reading Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies, which I think is a very good and enjoyable book, especially for aspiring film directors. 
Look at this: 

Isn’t that such a good “defence” of dialogue? The writer-director who has created the most memorable lines is Billy Wilder, who has 3 contenders for the best closing lines of all time—The Apartment (“Shut up and deal”), Some Like It Hot (“Nobody’s perfect”), and Sunset Boulevard (“All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up”). Dialogue is not uncinematic. It is only uncinematic when it is superfluous exposition, and worst if it’s the director’s way of explaining the film to the audience (which is common in Christopher Nolan’s films). 
Now look at this passage: 

That is fascinating and scary at the same time—would I be able to tell? 
The book offers some invaluable insight and advice about directing. I admire Sidney Lumet immensely, and now love him even more as I read the book. He is not an auteur, he might not even be seen as a stylist, but does it matter? I would say that 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon are masterpieces, and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is a great, heartbreaking film that should be better known. Many of his other films are also highly acclaimed, such as Serpico, The Verdict, Network, Murder on the Orient Express, Long Day’s Journey into Night... Why are some other directors ranked higher just because their films are more stylistic or technically more impressive? 
That leads me to another point: is the ability to work with actors not important? The directors who I think are masters at getting the best performances out of actors are Ingmar Bergman, Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet, and Francis Ford Coppola. And perhaps Roman Polanski (Adrien Brody never had anything remotely as good as his performance in The Pianist). 
Some other directors who are also good at working with actors are Billy Wilder, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Zhang Yimou, Krzysztof Kieslowski… (I don’t include Kurosawa and Mizoguchi because Japanese acting is a different style). 
As you follow a director’s work, you realise what their main strengths are—they are better at some aspects of filmmaking than others. Fellini’s main strengths, for example, are in blocking/staging, cinematography, and visual storytelling. Billy Wilder’s are in story, structure/ pacing, dialogue, and working with actors. Orson Welles’s are in cinematography (especially lighting), structure, editing, and sound. Luis Bunuel’s are in story/ plot, ideas, and pacing. Andrei Tarkovsky’s are in ideas, cinematography, sound, and atmosphere. 
You also notice, not weaknesses, but that some aspects don’t interest a director as much as others. There isn’t much to say about cinematography and lighting in Luis Bunuel’s films, for example; or editing in Tarkovsky’s; or story in Wong Kar-wai’s.  
It is not without reason that I think Ingmar Bergman’s the best director of all time, because his films do have everything—good story, interesting idea, depth, pacing, great cinematography (especially lighting), great sound, great editing (most notably in Persona), good production design (at least in Cries and Whispers and Fanny and Alexander), wonderful performances, good visual storytelling, experiments… But usually, directors have their strengths, and they may be weaker, or at least not as spectacular, in some other aspects of filmmaking, so why is it that directors who are good at techniques valued much more highly than directors who are good at drama (emotional complexity in a scene, and pacing for the film as a whole) and working with actors? 
When a film looks good, it is visually pleasing, but at the end of the day, so what? I like good acting. I like touching stories. I like films that make me see life differently and learn something about myself. I never use the word “great” for directors like Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson—they’re good at what they do, and their films are entertaining, but have no depth and offer no more than that. But even if we talk about Stanley Kubrick, a director I admire very much when it comes to techniques (especially the production design, cinematography, and use of music), none of his films has ever touched me on an emotional, personal level like 12 Angry Men or Dog Day Afternoon has. In Dog Day Afternoon, people talk a lot about Al Pacino, who indeed delivers a fine performance, one of the best in his career, but we should also talk about John Cazale—for some reason, I can never forget the incredibly sad look on his face when Al Pacino asks where he wants to go if he could go anywhere, and he says “Wyoming”. 12 Angry Men shows Sidney Lumet’s talent at working with actors, and also his ability to make an engrossing film in an enclosed space. I’d choose Sidney Lumet over Kubrick anytime. 
But that’s enough. Get Making Movies. It’s a good book. Even Roger Ebert said: 

“Invaluable… I am sometimes asked if there is 1 book a filmgoer could read to learn more about how movies are made and what to look for while watching them. This is the book.”