After all the speculation and bated breath, the pundits were proven inconsequential Sunday night at the 79th Academy Awards, as “The Departed” enjoyed free reign over the night’s biggest awards, winning statues for best picture, director, adapted screenplay, and editing.

In the two months since the Los Angeles film critics kicked off the Oscar season with a bang, throwing their support behind the then unreleased Clint Eastwood war drama “Letters From Iwo Jima,” the pendulum of Oscar speculation has never stopped swinging. First, “Iwo Jima” held the edge in the coveted best picture race, followed by the glitz and glamour of “Dreamgirls,” the quirkiness of “Little Miss Sunshine” and the globe-spanning drama of “Babel.”

Meanwhile, to little fanfare, Mr. Scorsese’s star-driven tale of crime and punishment in Boston — a film of sheer entertainment without the “heavier” themes to be found in most recent Academy Award winners — stayed with the pack.

For an organization that tends to reward “important” films, the choice of “The Departed” was noteworthy. One has to go back to 1997, when “Titanic,” the big summer blockbuster, made James Cameron the “king of the world,” or to 1991 and the chills of “The Silence of the Lambs” to find best picture winners that were built first and foremost as straightforward works of entertainment.

In fact, the battle leading up to this year’s Scorsese celebration pitted “The Departed” against a handful of titles eerily reminiscent of recent best picture winners. Much as “A Beautiful Mind” won the award in 2001, so did “The Queen” hope to be this year’s biopic to beat; similar to 2002’s “Chicago,” “Dreamgirls” sought to be the year’s crowd-pleasing musical; “Letters From Iwo Jima” was this year’s epic counterpoint to “The Lord of the Rings” and “Gladiator.” And while “Babel” used the same theme of overlapping storylines that drew voters to “Crash” last year, “Little Miss Sunshine” sought to build film festival adoration into solid Oscar buzz, just as “Brokeback Mountain,” “Lost in Translation,” and “In the Bedroom” did in years past.

But in the end, it was the anti-“Oscar film” that would prevail — a surprise to the establishment, but a popular choice among viewers. Even before the awards, the Internet Movie Database’s page for “The Departed” showed that the film had enticed some 60,000 visitors to give it an online rating, placing it as one of the site’s top 75 films of all time. (To put this in perspective, the nearest best picture nominee from this year was “Little Miss Sunshine,” which had some 30,000 votes. Hardly a scientific measure, but proof that “The Departed” was the preferred nominee for a large segment of the country’s most avid moviegoers.

As the other “Oscar films” tripped over themselves in strategizing ways to woo votes from the Academy, “The Departed” just kept chugging along; after a successful opening run in October, it was brought back to theaters in early January and watched closely with the anticipation that it would finally bestow one of America’s most vital filmmakers with a long-overdue golden statue.

When Mr. Scorsese did finally take the stage, it was less a moment to cheer than one to nod with agreement. After five nominations, Mr. Scorsese won his elusive Oscar by turning his back on such recent, loftier projects as historical epics — 2002’s “Gangs of New York” — and biopics — 2004’s “The Aviator”— and returning to the mean streets where “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” and “Goodfellas” made his name.

It was appropriate, then, not only for Mr. Scorsese but for the Academy itself, that this year’s winner was not the “big” movie, but the “fun” movie, the story that focused less on giving people something to think about and more on ensuring they had a good time.