Can I get mouse events in a QGraphicsItem?

In your subclassed QGraphicsView, you need to call the default implementations of overridden mouse event methods if you want them to propagate down to the items. For example:

CustomView::mousePressEvent(QMouseEvent *event)
{
    // handle the event as you like

    QGraphicsView::mousePressEvent(event); // then call default implementation
}

If you want to accept hover events, you need to call QGraphicsItem::setAcceptHoverEvents(true);. Otherwise you do not need to enable any particular mouse tracking.

EDIT: Here is a full working example:

#include <QtGui>

class CustomView : public QGraphicsView
{
protected:
    void mousePressEvent(QMouseEvent *event)
    {
        qDebug() << "Custom view clicked.";
        QGraphicsView::mousePressEvent(event);
    }
};

class CustomItem : public QGraphicsRectItem
{
protected:
    void mousePressEvent(QGraphicsSceneMouseEvent *event)
    {
        qDebug() << "Custom item clicked.";
    }
};

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    QApplication a(argc, argv);

    CustomItem item;
    item.setRect(20, 20, 60, 60);

    QGraphicsScene scene(0, 0, 100, 100);
    scene.addItem(&item);

    CustomView view;
    view.setScene(&scene);
    view.show();
    return a.exec();
}