Joseph Kosma (born József Kozma) was a Hungarian-born composer who emigrated to France in 1933 and became a central figure in French film music. He studied with Béla Bartók and Hanns Eisler, and formed a close creative partnership with poet Jacques Prévert and director Jean Renoir, scoring films including La Grande Illusion (1937), La Bête Humaine (1938), and Les Enfants du Paradis (1945). His 1945 song ‘Les Feuilles Mortes,’ with Prévert’s lyrics, was later translated into English as ‘Autumn Leaves’ and became a jazz standard.

‘Autumn Leaves’ remains one of the most recorded songs in the jazz standard repertoire, and Kosma’s decades of film scoring for Renoir and other directors made him one of the defining composers of French cinema’s golden age.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kosma