Joseph Kosma

József Kozma was born in Budapest in 1905 to a Jewish family whose parents taught stenography and typing. He emigrated to France and became the composer of the French cinema's greatest years, writing for Jean Renoir — La Grande Illusion, La Règle du jeu — and for Marcel Carné, including Les Enfants du paradis, which like Trauner he worked on clandestinely under the Occupation, when as a Jew he was barred from being credited. With Jacques Prévert he wrote Les Feuilles mortes, which as Autumn Leaves became one of the most recorded songs in the world.