All you really need in a camera to take a nice picture is a good eye, a decent lens, and some degree of control over the exposure. Edit: and good lighting...
A decent lens is key - I've taken great pictures with the most rudimentary, manual Minolta SLR - but those lenses were great. Same with Olympus (okay, an OM2 hardly qualifies as rudimentary, but it was the lense that made it great).
Even my pocket digital Canon takes very good pictures (not quite the same as the film OM2 though), and it's not the electronic doodads - it's the quality of the lens.