Daughter of stars Maria Montez and Jean-Pierre Aumont, Tina (also billed as Tina Marquand: she was married to actor and CANDY director Christian M.) was one of the best and most beautiful women of sixties and seventies cinema, a bona fide Eurocult diva, and a mainstream arthouse film 'star turn' supporting player. Launched in MODESTY BLAISE, this long legged kittenish but very emancipated woman (she'd have been ideal as fumetti heroine VALENTINA) quickly established herself in memorable small parts like Romina, one of Alberto Sordi's seven mistresses, in
Scusi, lei è favorevole o contrario? (the newest, most up to date girl among them, the one he tells the movie that follows to as a sexy bedtime story), and was almost instantly elevated to Star Status in what may remain her juiciest role, as Carmen in the arthouse Spaghetti Bizet Adaptation MAN, PRIDE, VENGEANCE, acting opposite romantic rivals Franco Nero and Klaus Kinski (director Luigi Bazzoni featured her prominently in another 'serious Spaghetti' some years later, 1975's BLU GANG)
Many of us know her best (or perhaps only) for her Daniela in TORSO, but she was also Herta in SALON KITTY (connoisseur Tinto Brass dubbed her one of the most beautiful women of all time), Henriette in Fellini's CASANOVA (the one conquest that the Don Juan hero gets seriously hung up on romantically) , a different 'Valentina' in Vincente Minnelli's final movie, A MATTER OF TIME, Mary Magdalene in Rossellini's MESSIAH, part of the eclectic cast of the crazy
Holocaust parte seconda: i ricordi, i deliri, la vendetta (along with Rolling Stones fellow traveler and hedonist William Berger), and apparently a ghoul in Jean Rollin's DEUX ORPHELINES VAMPIRES, not to forget my favorite seven or eight minutes of Aumont: the delightfully vulgar, impossibly long legged prostitute in Francesco Rosi's CADAVERI ECCELLENTI, key witness to an assasination at the heart of an international-all star-cast conspiracy, and a perfectly scaled part for her talents, clearly meant as a mod swinging version of the role Jean Peters played in PICKUP ON SOUTHSTREET. Would that she (and top cop Lino Ventura who she fences with here) had had more 'golden age' noir-type movies to have acted in! Or been born a little later so she could have been Ripley in ALIEN or FEMME NIKITA or AEON FLUX (all perfectly suited).She was every bit the equal of her charismatic parents, but most of her era's films were too small to contain her amazonian self and talents.
A sad day.
French Obituary for Tina Aumont