I watched Seven Samurai again last night, great movie. I noticed that many of the farmers ran in an odd manner. Hard to describe, but it was as if their arms weren’t fully articulating, and their strides seemed to be shorter than would be optimal for maximum speed. Was this a cultural thing at the time the film was made, or were the actors doing it on purpose to make the farmer characters look goofy? I have noticed the stunted arm gyrations in a modern movie, the actor was Asian but not Japanese.
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/18yn41n/asian_running/