Mathematics is rife with the fruit of abstraction. Many problems which first are solved via "direct" methods (long and difficult calculations, tricky estimates, and gritty technical theorems) later turn out to follow beautifully from basic properties of simple devices, though it often takes some work to set up the new machinery. I would like to hear about some examples of problems which were originally solved using arduous direct techniques, but were later found to be corollaries of more sophisticated results.
I am not as interested in problems which motivated the development of complex machinery that eventually solved them, such as the Poincare conjecture in dimension five or higher (which motivated the development of surgery theory) or the Weil conjectures (which motivated the development of l-adic and other cohomology theories). I would also prefer results which really did have difficult solutions before the quick proofs were found. Finally, I insist that the proofs really be quick (it should be possible to explain it in a few sentences granting the machinery on which it depends) but certainly not necessarily easy (i.e. it is fine if the machinery is extremely difficult to construct).
In summary, I'm looking for results that everyone thought was really hard but which turned out to be almost trivial (or at least natural) when looked at in the right way. I'll post an answer which gives what I would consider to be an example.
I decided to make this a community wiki, and I think the usual "one example per answer" guideline makes sense here.
Best Answer
Here is my example. In the 1930's (I think), Wiener gave a proof that if $f$ is a continuous nonvanishing function on the circle with absolutely convergent Fourier series, then so is $1/f$. The proof was a long piece of hard analysis, involving detailed local calculations and complicated estimates. Later (in the 1940's?), Gelfand found that the statement follows from the basic theory of Banach algebras as follows. The functions on the circle with absolutely convergent Fourier series can be characterized as the image of the Gelfand transform $\Gamma: l^1(\mathbb{Z}) \to C(S^1)$. In general if $\Gamma: B \to C(M)$ is the Gelfand transform from a commutative Banach algebra to the ring of continuous functions on its maximal ideal space, then $x$ is invertible in $B$ if and only if $\Gamma(x)$ is invertible in $C(M)$. So the hypotheses on $f$ imply that $f = \Gamma(x)$ for some invertible $x$ in $l^1(\mathbb{Z})$, and a simple calculation shows that $1/f = \Gamma(x^{-1})$.